Theme and Variations
by sagredo
Summary: A series of one-shots featuring wild conjectures and awkward situations, dark pieces and humor. Ch. 32: Mrs. Hudson knows all. Warnings for Holmes in a dress. Or having once been in one. And some period-typical attitudes about this.
1. Professional Conduct

I had no early calls to make that morning and thus was enjoying the opportunity to begin my day as sluggishly as possible. While it was Holmes' practice to claim the coveted spot on the settee - and with his whole tall, lean frame draped over it he took up quite all of it - he had yet to make his entrance upon the sitting room, so I had curled up there gratefully with an afghan and the paper to drink my coffee. I was very much looking forward to some languid hours of comfortable solitude and was thus a bit concerned for their safety when none other than my flatmate came stumbling noisily into the room, much earlier than I'd expected him.

I felt a bit inclined to be cautious for my claim to the settee.

"Good morning, Holmes," I ventured, peering over the top of the paper. My companion, still dressed in the rumpled shirt and trousers he'd no doubt fallen into bed in, the hard line of his jaw made a bit softer to the eye by a shading of stubble, merely stretched and grumbled:

"I need a cigarette."

I was just as happy to leave him to that, and returned to the paper with a shrug as he began to hunt through the pockets of his inverness, his dressing gown, and any other article of clothing he'd thrown on the floor recently for his cigarette case.

Once he'd found this, I expected, there were few things he might do - retreat again to his room, ensconce himself in an armchair, or throw on a coat and dash back off on whatever case he'd been lately occupied with. He would not pick up his violin, as he never smoked and played at the same time for fear of doing harm to the instrument. At worst, he might take up some chemical pursuit, as the increased risk of fire his smoking presented to such tasks never deterred him from the practice. I simply sank behind my paper and prayed against the latter. At any rate, it seemed most likely that my relaxing morning should continue intact.

Or so I thought.

Quite suddenly, there came a knock at the door.

"A client?" I all but groaned.

Holmes' brows arched as he straightened up, drawing a cigarette from the case he'd retrieved and placing it between his lips.

"An angry one, if it is," he said around it. "Did you not hear him stomping up the steps?"

I shook my head.

"I suppose we'll see about it, anyhow," Holmes said, crossing to the door.

Normally he would have been loath to answer the door to a client unshaven, dressed in the clothes he'd slept in with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and would have dashed off to his room, throwing a "get that, would you, Watson?" over his shoulder. Under the circumstances I did not mind that he had not, though the fact still perplexes me. He opened the door to reveal what was indeed a very irate personage standing on the landing.

The fellow was perhaps a bit older than Holmes, in his mid twenties or so, and dressed rather classlessly in a plain suit that could have been a laborer's sunday best, or the standard attire of a middle class student. His face, had it not been flushed with rage, may have shown the weathering long hours out of doors might have produced and allowed me to draw a distinction, as might the condition of his hands had they not been curled into white knuckled fists.

"You!" he all but shrieked at Holmes.

Holmes didn't reply and very calmly took the cigarette from his mouth.

"You devious bastard!" the fellow on our door step continued. "I am ruined because of you!"

"Who are you again?" Holmes asked casually.

Our guest turned a whole new color entirely. "If you do not know me, sir, after -!"

"It's just I think I've ruined several enterprises lately," Holmes interjected, counting absently on the fingers of his hand unoccupied with holding his cigarette. "Were you the fraudulent importers of art, the coiners, or the blokes trafficking girls from Shanghai?"

"What?" the fellow on the landing gasped.

"Oh! I'm sorry, silly me," Holmes smiled finally, clapping a hand self-deprecatingly to his head. "You're the bookie from the fight at the Queen's Head."

"I swear I'll kill you for what you did!" the man continued to rage, putting up his fists now. I half rose, thinking to dart to my desk drawer for my revolver if things became serious.

Holmes, leaning very casually in the door way, put his cigarette back into his mouth and said insufferably:

"Well, you had better make your first swing count, hadn't you?"

This was more than the other man could take. He wound an arm back to strike, and in slow motion I seemed to note for the first time the heavy, gnarled knuckles of a veteran pugilist. I leapt to my feet, starting for my desk.

And then Holmes slammed the door.

There was a terrific crack and a howl of agony from the landing as our guest's blow connected with the solid oak.

I had stuttered to a halt, my efforts stymied by this sudden turn of events as my brain, reflexively tuned to action-pitch, had suddenly found what it expected from a dangerous scenario replaced by a total inanity.

Holmes was ridiculously pleased with himself and turned away from the door, hilarity all over his face, punching both fists in the air victoriously.

From the landing outside there came a stream of shouted invectives which I do not care to record in print. Before long the fellow was putting his shoulder into the door, now more determined than ever to make good on his threat, and it had occurred to Holmes that if he didn't want to incur our landlady's wrath as well he'd better take the trouble he'd bought himself elsewhere. He quickly gathered his inverness from the floor and a hat from his desk, still grinning as he stuffed his cigarette case into his pocket and called: "'Bye, Watson!"

He dashed for his room, no doubt meaning to make his exit by way of the window and the fire escape.

I supposed, when the shouting and banging from the hall turned to footsteps flying down the stairs at double time, that the pugilist he'd seen fit to antagonize had spotted him in the street and given chase.

Later, when Holmes returned surprisingly none the worse for wear, he would relate to me how he had come across the fellow in the first place - by exposing to his boxing cronies that he'd been pocketing a portion of the winnings his client's made on matches.

In any event, I began on my rounds early that day. Initially I had tried to salvage my plans for a relaxing morning, but after a few minutes of jumping at every sound, expecting my wounded friend or his irate opponent to come stumbling or storming in, respectively, I had to wonder whom exactly I meant to kid. I lived with Sherlock Holmes, after all.

I should have known better than to expect a dull moment.


	2. Napoleon in Siberia

"A _maths_ professor," Watson repeated incredulously.

Holmes was engaged in hunting through the sitting room for his lock picks and dark lantern.

"Yes," he replied emphatically, waving a hand full of squiggly wire tools at the doctor, "he's the napoleon of crime."

"A maths professor."

"Absolutely. You don't know, because you're a doctor. When your in the natural sciences you have to deal with these people quite a bit more. The mathematicians are the worst of the scientific community - right after the theoretical physicists."

"I've understood the physicists to say that the worst of the scientific community are chemists."

Holmes shot a doubtful glance over his shoulder as he retrieved another pick from beneath the sofa cushions. "You don't know any physicists. You're just being contrary."

Watson rolled his eyes with a shrug and returned to reading the lancet. Holmes, meanwhile, concluded the lock pick search to his satisfaction and went to his desk drawer for his revolver.

"If this maths professor is the napoleon of crime," Watson asked thoughtfully at length, "what does that make you, Holmes?"

Holmes straightened up, spreading his arms dramatically, and declared in his most menacing voice "The Russia of justice."

Watson blinked at him silently for a moment. He wondered if Holmes realized how ironic such a pronouncement seemed when he was standing there dressed like a Soho match dipper with his revolver in one hand and a hand full of lock picks sticking out of his pocket. At last he could not suppress a chuckle.

Holmes looked just a bit put out, his posture wilting slightly.

"My dear fellow," Watson laughed, "if you insist on saying things like that I'm going to start printing them. I'm going to quote you on that if I write up this case."

"Do," Holmes insisted petulantly, "it's brilliant."


	3. A Matter of the Heart

I dreamed of the time I was shot in the chest.

I heard the report of the gun, and felt my body jerk, but felt no pain, as before. I was surprised, incredulous - and at the same time, I knew what had happened. In slow motion I stopped, the world going hazy and bright, and looked down at myself to see the damage.

And there was nothing.

Or at first it appeared that way. There was nothing but the neat, round hole in my jacket, over my heart. No blood that I could see, and no pain. This couldn't be right...

Moving as though through something thick and viscous, I pulled back the lapel of my jacket and slid my hand beneath.

My heart sank. There was the evidence I'd been missing - the hot, sticky dampness of blood pouring from a fatal shot. It was there after all.

But, in the dream, when I pulled my hand back to look, it wasn't blood. It was something like ink. Black, oily, and poisonous - it coated my palm. I was bleeding this?

Half frantic, the rest of the world forgotten, I pulled aside my jacket and waist coat and tore open the top buttons of my shirt, looking for the wound.

It was straight through my heart, alright - a gaping, ragged maw, pouring out this black substance.

Gingerly, I probed the edge of it with a finger tip. And, astonishingly, the skin stretched, then tore. The edges of the wound pulled apart like putty, and once again there was no pain. I felt myself starting to tremble as I stared at this. Some impulse pushed me on, however, and I poked at the wound again. I dug my fingers into it, stretching the opening wider. More black stuff wicked along my hand and down my wrist.

Where was it all coming from? What was wrong?

And, most disturbingly, why was I finding nothing beneath this wound that I could recognize?

I was of course well up on anatomy. I knew that my probing fingers ought to meet ribs, lungs - heart - eventually. But all to be found was twisted and foreign - tissue knotted horribly into forms I couldn't name.

Sick and trembling now, I staggered back against a wall, feeling my knees give at the last instant and sliding down to sit on the pavement. My head bowed over my chest, my breath was coming in shallow, hoarse stabs, and I was so cold. I had never been so cold. I was terrified, but not of dying. It was the last thing on my mind.

Finally, something from the hazy, bright world outside the isolated little sphere I'd been existing in knelt down in front of me and grabbed me by the collar, jerking my head up to look at him. The features were blurred, but recognizable. Watson.

Deftly he pushed my hands away from the wound and peeled back the layers of clothing over it, too quick for me to react to the stab of fear at what he might think of what he saw.

But, when he spoke, he sounded relieved. "Good Lord," he muttered, "how did that miss your heart?"

I looked down at his hands probing the wound I'd torn open, and the black stuff running out of it, and the twisted, scarred tissue beneath and answered helplessly:

"That's all that's there."


	4. Debt

It was an unusual situation which had me on my guard from the first. Holmes owed me, and dinner and a concert had been the agreed upon price. However, the concert he chose mystified me.

A lesser known quartet of lesser known musicians was playing a small venue, offering the works of an entirely unknown composer. Or, at least, the fellow's name was entirely unknown to me, and I said as much.

"I know him," Holmes admitted with the queerest quirk of a smile, "quite well, actually. I think you'd be very interested to hear his work, Watson."

"If you are so enthusiastic about it I'd have to disagree," I muttered, "our tastes differ wildly, after all."

Holmes glanced at me sidelong from beneath arched brows. "Rather looking a gift horse in the mouth aren't you?"

"Not at all. In all fairness, we ought to have gone to a concert of my choosing."

Holmes chuckled.

"Really, Holmes, after -"

"Let's not go into it again," he said with a wince. "If this doesn't suit, then some other evening -"

I waved a hand, smiling at him in spite of myself, so contrite and uncomfortable did he appear. "I'm only playing, Holmes."

"Are you?"

"Mostly. You apologize so rarely it's entertaining when you can be induced to do so."

Holmes rolled his eyes. We disembarked from our cab and were soon taking our seats in the concert hall. I was mystified a bit further when we passed inside and without preamble or so much as presenting a ticket Holmes led us to what had to be one of the better boxes in the house.

He slouched into one of the seats as was his habit, and favored me with one of those elusive genuine smiles of his as I settled with some caution and mistrust into mine.

"I promise our being here is perfectly legitimate," he insisted, laughing. He'd read my mind, again, it seemed.

"Well, I know enough of detection to recognize your modus operandi, Holmes -"

"My modus operandi - !"

"You are a very audacious thief in the instances the appellation can be applied to you. If we were going to slip into any box and merely insist that it was ours -"

"_Watson_," Holmes laughed again, "I've told you that the composer is an acquaintance of mine. Do you think I'd pull a gammon like that when this is all in the interest of making amends?"

"Especially then," I replied. "But since you know the composer I suppose I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. These must be very expensive seats -"

Holmes cut me off with a derisive snort.

"Were they not?" I probed.

"Bloody hell, Watson," Holmes sighed, finally beginning to show some signs of irritation.

I took this as my cue to leave well enough alone, and asked him no further questions.

None the less, his reasons for insisting that we attend _this_ concert in particular continued to be a mystery to me.

The mystery only deepened when the house lights finally dimmed and the curtain rose.

It really was a plain little venue, but the opening notes left little doubt as to the quality of the acoustics. It was one grand, swelling chord that spanned the whole range of the quartet. All the musicians seemed to be playing double stops so the effect was that the entire hall resonated with the low notes, like the rumbling of a landslide, and sang with the clear sweetness of the high notes. It was like a breeze during an earthquake. This cord rolled and swelled into another, and then another, so that the earthquake and the breeze seemed to become waves pounding the hall, like the surf tumbling and crashing against the sea cliffs of the coast. It was very impressionistic and illustrative, and yet the emotion it conjured up was straightforward. It was equally reminiscent of the violent waves as of silent weeping.

So dramatic and diverting was this that at first I failed to notice how aberrant Holmes' behavior had become. Ironically, while I found myself wholly enthralled by the music for once, he seemed not engaged by it at all. While I ought to have found him in his usual attitude, with his head tipped back and his eyes closed, lost to the world - oftentimes I'd observed that he would even, by some strange instinct, breath in time with a piece that struck him particularly - he was instead watching me intently over steepled fingers.

"What do you think?" he asked, leaning in close and speaking into my ear at the questioning look I'd shot him.

"I've never heard anything like it," I said truthfully. Meanwhile the chords rose and fell in tide like progression, until they quieted finally and the tempo picked up, the music sublimating into a series of technical, complicated scales handled mostly by the violin but accentuated to stunning effect by the lower instruments. The waves were now a rain storm. "In all honesty it sounds a bit like it was written by some manically depressed conglomerate of Grieg and Paganini," I added. "Who perhaps admired Debussy."

Holmes seemed strangely undecided as to whether or not to be amused or disappointed by this.

"Nothing about it strikes you as familiar?" he asked.

I did not know why it should. "How could it? This composer friend of yours is certainly original - if he has yet to gain any great popularity it is only because he's the first of his kind."

Odder still, I recognized here the quickly suppressed curl of a smile at the corner of my friend's mouth and the manner in which he casually glanced back to the performers as the sort of mannerisms he was liable to adopt when deeply flattered. I may as well have congratulated him sincerely on some hard won achievement in a case.

Soon, however, my suspicions were lost once again as my attention became arrested by the music.

The character of the piece seemed to me to suggest an enigma. It may have been an emotional confession - but it only dipped here and there towards the truth, as though the confessor could allude to, but would not say outright, whatever secret they were keeping. It was a forceful sort of denial, however - an insistence upon a boundary - and not a coy refusal that it brought to mind.

The piece was certainly beautiful, but in the sense that a bright light scattering off cut glass is beautiful - intense and severe, making no pretension of appeal to the softer senses, demanding to be accepted for what it was. Although I would not have expected to be, I found myself very attracted to this quality. The piece held my attention totally as I took in its various nuances, attempting to understand it. I was actually annoyed when Holmes leaned towards me again and broke in upon my thoughts.

"Are you sure you don't recognize any of this?"

"I've said that the complexity and technicality remind me a bit of Paganini," I replied tersely, "And the heavy chords are a bit like Grieg."

One of Holmes' brows arched sardonically. "I'll give you a hint, then," he said. "In two measures, think about what happened the other night when I was up playing my violin and you came downstairs and told me to be quiet."

I hardly knew what to make of this. My grasp of music theory was sufficiently weak as to render the idea of my accurately counting two measures of the intricate piece almost absurd. Fortunately, I suppose, the clue Holmes had given turned out to be very obvious.

I could not miss the change in the mood of the piece.

The chords came hard and fast upon one another, blending and diverging like light refracted through a prism until finally crashing into silence. Then, like smoke from the rubble of an explosion, a much softer, drifting tune arose. It was quiet and gentle, but elusive, the violin playing in the middle of its range and the rest of the instruments humming around it and bearing it up as opposed to pointedly accentuating what it played. And yet for all the differences this part of the piece bore to what preceded it, one could steal easily recognize the same thread running through the whole thing, the same basis underlying it - two different shades painted on one canvas, complementing one another.

And, quite suddenly, I felt like a complete fool.

All along I had been missing it - I knew exactly who's playing the piece reminded me of, and it wasn't Grieg.

I whirled towards Holmes, my jaw dropping. He smiled, looking down at his steepled fingers as opposed to returning my gaze.

"You see what inspired the second movement, then?"

"Good God!" I cried, under my breath so as not to disturb the whole hall, "someone has taken _your_ scales and chords and made a song of them!"

"I, Watson," Holmes corrected a bit petulantly. "I have taken my scales and chords and made a song of them. I told you you did me an injustice when you said I produced nothing like music when playing for my own enjoyment."

"I wholeheartedly take it back!" I declared. "What part of this were you playing when I interrupted you that night?"

Holmes could not suppress a pleased smile here. "I was putting the finishing touches on the Bass's part. It's very monochromatic without the other instruments, and a violin has different strings so I agree that it sounded horrid then -"

"I can't believe that you wrote this," I interjected, shaking my head. "I never knew you wrote music at all, Holmes."

"Nothing as complete as this, before" he admitted. "Really it was something of an experiment on my part - to write down what I played. Such as it is," he added cheekily, "I've made enough on it to cover dinner."

We listened to the rest of the piece in silence - I with a whole new perspective on it, and Holmes approximating more closely his usual manner of listening to music, though with a critical air of examination as I suppose indicated an only natural concern for the handling of his piece.

"What did you call it?" I asked once the final notes had died down.

Holmes shrugged. "String quartet in G minor movements one through four."

"Really? Only that?"

Holmes screwed up his mouth and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. "I may have titled the second movement something unflattering about cross flatmates."

I daresay he thought of a better name for at least one of the other movements when I pointed out jokingly that treating me to a concert from which he'd turned enough of a profit to render paying for dinner no expense hardly cancelled his debt.


	5. Further Attempts at Professional Conduct

I had managed to drag my somewhat unsteady companion off to a cab and was intent on taking him home. Regardless of how his case was progressing, I could not in any good conscience have left him to terrorize the metropolis in his current condition.

Holmes was seated beside me, his collar undone and his dark hair falling into his eyes in disarray, stooped forward with his elbow resting on his knee and his forehead propped against the back of his hand.

He might have appeared exhausted if his eyes hand't been squeezed shut in mirth and his lips drawn back in an absurd grin.

"Holmes," I informed him over his snickering, "you're drunk."

"Yes," he chortled. "No - I'm very, very drunk. Absolutely pissed, in fact. And do you know what?" here he glanced up at me, grey eyes surprisingly bright for one so intoxicated, "It makes talking to Lestrade _interesting_." This confession prompted a descent back into hilarity which he seemed helpless to resist, and thus it was utterly lost on him when I rolled my eyes.

"And what of Shaw?" I asked.

"Oh, I think he's still passed out under the table back at the pub," Holmes admitted, his manner growing a bit more serious. But only a bit.

"I mean, did you get the information from him that you needed?"

"Well, yes, of course. But let me tell you, Watson - that fellow can drink. You have no idea how many it took before he started talking. God, I'm going to be regretting this in the morning..."

"Did you have to drink as well?"

"It had to be convincing. Besides, you know how things are in this business. Lushes, the lot of us, private detectives."

"You're not a private detective. You're a consulting detective."

Holmes seemed about to reply, but was fairly flung against me as our cab took a corner at a speed which was too much for his impaired balance.

"You have no idea," he said at last, leaning on my shoulder, "how refreshing it is to hear someone else say that."

I pushed him upright with a sigh as our cab pulled up outside our rooms. "Yes, well, the only difference seems to be that consulting detectives are a bit more adventurous where their preferences in regards to narcotics are concerned."

Holmes, to all appearances, found this to be the funniest thing he'd ever heard.

He hopped down from the cab, I following close on his heels after paying our fare, seizing him by his sleeve and dragging him back onto a straight course for the front steps when he swerved slightly.

"Kindly don't paw at me, Watson," he grumbled, brushing my hand away.

At any rate, I managed to get him inside and up the stairs, all without either of us taking any drastic falls or warranting Mrs. Hudson's notice.

At last we reached the landing. I stood before our door, fumbling in my coat pocket for my keys, while Holmes leaned against the wall beside it, brushing a finger tip over a cabbage rose in the wall paper thoughtfully.

"You know something about flowers, Watson," he began to say.

"Oh, Holmes, don't start with that again."

"What a queer thing, is a rose..."

At last I found my key and made haste to turn it in the lock, flinging the door open and hauling my companion inside before he could continue in his soliloquy.

It had never occurred to me to consider that this might have been a mistake.

Stepping into the sitting room revealed that our rooms were not unoccupied. A comely young lady attired demurely in a chocolate coloured walking suit rose in alarm from the sofa as we stumbled in.

I froze, staring back at her in something approaching horror and thankfully had the presence of mind to throw out an arm and bar my friend's progress before he could stagger any further into the room.

The lady glanced back and forth between my companion and I for a moment before asking: "Is one of you Mr. Sherlock Holmes?"

I thought of the potential detriment to my friend's reputation, and answered quickly, "No." Unfortunately, at the same instant, he blurted out:

"Your name is Violet?"

The lady jumped. For a moment she seemed unsure of which of us to reply to, but finally turned to Holmes with an expression of surprise.

"Yes, but how -"

"The handkerchief in your hand has your initials and the bloom of that name embroidered on it," Holmes explained, waving a hand over the triviality. "But your hair is _red_?," he continued obliviously, as though wondering at some paradoxical contradiction.

"...Yes, it is," the lady replied slowly.

Holmes shrugged. "I'm kind of observant."

"Are you Mr. Holmes?" our guest ventured uncertainly.

"No," I interjected. It took me an unfortunate interval of time to notice that Holmes had been standing beside me, nodding. At last I took note of this and drove an elbow into his side discreetly, at which he flinched, but thankfully took the hint and imitated me in shaking his head instead.

"You're not Mr. Holmes?" the lady asked, and I admit some clarification was in order.

"No," my friend and I chorused this time.

"But..." she replied, biting her lower lip and looking a bit desperate, "Mr. Holmes does live at this address?"

Well, this was a much more difficult question.

"Not right now," Holmes explained before I could stop him.

"He's away on another case," I added, trying to inject some sense, "on the continent."

"In shanghai," Holmes offered. Which prompted me to amend my statement:

"Well, that is, on _a_ continent."

"Because asia, like europe, is a continent."

"When will he return?" the lady pressed. Bravely, I thought, considering.

"Tomorrow," sighed Holmes. "And he's going to have a damned fine headache, too..."

"Tomorrow," I agreed with what I hoped was a convincing smile, gripping Holmes by the shoulder of his coat and yanking him upright as he swayed a bit. "Yes, we expect him tomorrow." I thought this would have been an end of matters, but then Holmes asked:

"Will the trouble you're in catch up to you before then?"

Our guest blanched dramatically, a dainty, gloved hand flying up to be pressed to her mouth.

"How can you know of the trouble I'm in?" she demanded.

"Well, you locked the door after Mrs. Hudson let you in because you were afraid of waiting here alone, obviously," Holmes grumbled. "But you've some place safe to go, haven't you? Oh, and Mrs. Hudson can let you out by the back garden if you like. I go that way all the time. The alley comes out on the Marylbone road."

The lady continued to regard him with a shocked expression for a moment, until her features finally softened into a look of mere scrutiny.

"Pardon me, but - are you _sure_ you're not Mr. Holmes?"

"Well, naturally -" Holmes began, then checked himself, " - I'm _not. _I'd never be so gauche as to wear an ear flapped hunting cap in London, for one thing -"

"But it is convenient for you to return tomorrow?" I interjected.

"Yes," our guest nodded, seemingly a bit unsettled (and no wonder!), "Shall I call again at this hour?"

"It's fine with me," Holmes shrugged. "I mean with Holmes."

"Capital!" I said quickly, darting forward to usher the lady from the room before any further insanity could take place, "we shall see you again at this hour tomorrow."

"Goodbye, Violet," added Holmes as I shut the door behind her.

He then staggered to the sofa and fell face first upon it.


	6. A Case of Identity

My name is not William Sherlock Scott Holmes. It really is just Sherlock Holmes. The aforementioned lengthy appellation is in fact due entirely to my landlady's ingenuity.

Mrs. Hudson has a habit of addressing one by his whole name, you see, when one has incurred her wrath. Apparently "Sherlock Holmes" simply isn't enough to do the magnitude of her wrath justice, anymore.

When I first took up residence in baker street I tended to get by with a "Mr. Holmes!" bellowed up the stairs every now and then, when some transgression or other of mine had been discovered. Shortly this had escalated to "Mr. Sherlock Holmes!" as in Mrs. Hudson's mind something more than my prefix and surname were needed to let me know exactly how much trouble I was in.

Sherlock Scott followed.

Lately we are up to William Sherlock Scott.

Watson tells me that the fact that she's had to start making up names to accurately express the severity of her anger should indicate something to me.

I think it indicates that eventually, if we are up to enough names, I shall have ample time to make a get away before she's done shouting.

I also think that her recently upping the ante to two pseudonyms plus my actual name is not entirely justified. I explained that I needed the silver to precipitate the copper, blast it all - and that I didn't know it was her great grandmother's silverware. It was only two forks. But, as usual, she refuses to see reason.

On the bright side William Sherlock Scott Holmes does have a sort of aristocratic appeal.


	7. The Soul of Wit

"What do you want for christmas, Holmes?" Watson asked one evening. He was standing before the window, watching the snow fall. Holmes, lithe frame stretched out on the sofa beside the fire, replied moodily,

"A case I could give a damn about."

Watson scoffed good-naturedly. "And how, my dear Holmes, am I to go about procuring one of those?"

Holmes lifted the arm that had been lying over his face and peered at the doctor from beneath it. "You could kill someone."

Watson rolled his eyes. "What _else_ would you like for christmas?"


	8. Justice

Watson thought, for the second time, that he was seeing the ghost of his friend. Holmes leaned in the door way of the sitting room, pale as death, dressed in the now disheveled and bloody clothing he'd been wearing the night he was shot. His eyes were glassy and distant with pain, sweat dampened strands of hair falling into his eyes and blood showing on the edges of his lips.

"Why," he rasped, his voice strained and hoarse, "did I wake up alone in charring cross -" He never got to complete the sentence, as at this moment his body crumpled, sending him sprawling against the side table.

"Holmes!" Watson exclaimed, darting forward to his side. As gingerly as he could, he gathered the other man into his arms and pulled him to his feet. Holmes was trembling and weak with shock, but Watson still felt his body jerk taut as he helped him up, a cry of pain strangling in his throat as he forcibly suppressed it. He clamped both arms around the wound in his stomach, equally from the pain as well as to hide how much it had bled, Watson thought, as he drug him along to the sofa. He set him down upon it, but stepped back. Holmes felt a weight drop into his chest at this. Watson, as opposed to helping him, as opposed to fussing over him and being the doctor that he was, had deliberately withdrawn his hand. He stood at some distance away, merely looking at the wounded man on the sofa.

"My God, Holmes," he breathed at last, "you've killed yourself. Look at you! You were at charring cross because that wound wanted treatment!"

Holmes shook his head, dragging up the strength to gasp: "No. I was at charring cross because you couldn't treat it."

Watson recoiled as if slapped. He stood frozen for a moment, and then paced before the cold and darkened fire place, rubbing a hand over his face as though to scrub away the grief that had risen up clearly on his features.

"Don't, Holmes," he demanded desperately.

"Don't...what..." the detective rasped "don't tell you...that you didn't...kill her?"

The grief was replaced by rage. "How dare you. How dare you, Holmes!"

"Watson...when Mary -"

"Don't you say her name!"

"It wasn't. Your fault."

Watson whirled away from the fire place. "Don't presume to tell me a thing about that night, Holmes! _You weren't there!_ You didn't listen when she breathed her last! You didn't sit beside her, with her blood on your hands -"

"You know," Holmes managed to interject, speaking in jerks, "that you tried." He coughed and swallowed down the blood that had flooded his mouth. "You you -"

"Did everything?" Watson demanded, "everything I would have done for any other patient? Do you think it makes a bloody difference?!"

Holmes scoffed, though it turned to coughing again. "You know. What's really. Twisted about this, Watson...You haven't. Seen a patient...since she died...you can't even go near a hospital...and its. Been. Six months. You don't want to get better...you want...to feel this badly...to make up for it."

Watson was silent, and only looked back at the detective through angry, pain filled eyes.

"This has. To stop." Holmes choked. "You have. To let. Go. And you have to. Come over here and do...your job...or I'm going to die. Don't. Keep. Punishing yourself..."

He trailed off here, choking on the blood that had come up his throat. He knew enough to understand that this probably meant that he'd torn whatever the surgeons had sewed back up inside him. And if the blood pooling beneath the arm clamped over his stomach was any indication, he'd torn the stitches that had closed the wound as well.

He watched Watson's face for a reaction, knowing, praying, that he'd come to his senses now. That he'd have to quit hiding from what had happened, and escape the guilt that had paralyzed him. That he'd have to decide to get better. Holmes had bet his life that he would.

But, eternities seemed to slip by as Watson simply stared down at him, his expression lost. Surprise and despair hit Holmes at once as the doctor simply shook his head, looking down at the floor.

"You're wrong," he said, his voice empty and cold, and then wryly humorous. "You're wrong, Holmes, fatally wrong. It was because I couldn't treat _you_. Do you understand?"

Watson glanced up, the shock and horror he read in his former friend's face doing nothing but to solidify his purpose.

"You left. You cant even comprehend what you did. You bastard - I nearly let you bleed out on the pavement the other night. You shouldn't have come back here. It's cost you too much." He sat down in his armchair across from the sofa, his movements slow, perching on the edge of it seriously with his elbows balanced on his knees. "You see Holmes, I understand that Mary's death wasn't my fault. I know now that your pseudo-death was not. Nor the intervening years of ruin...No, the blame lies with another entirely."

Holmes listened to this, the shock that had struck him initially sublimating into a sort of crushed acceptance. Yes, the blame lay elsewhere. He knew better than any.

"You could do this?" he asked tightly. It amazed him, that the man seated across from him was this far gone. He understood that he'd been through horrors - but Watson, of all people - his Watson! - could sit beside a dying man and merely look on?

"Oh, yes," Watson nodded.

Holmes shut his eyes.

There was a long silence. But for the cold dimness of the fireless room and the state Holmes was in, it almost could have been a familiar scene. They almost could have been whiling the evening away together again, as they had done in previous years. At last Watson asked: "You can lie there, knowing that I'm watching you die, and feel nothing?"

One corner of Holmes' mouth twitched wryly. "Oh, don't think that, Watson."

Watson's hardened expression did not turn a hair. For another moment, the only sound in the room was Holmes' rattling breath and the tick of the clock on the mantel.

"I'm curious," the detective gasped finally, "if you've thought...about what you're going to do with me...once I'm gone."

"With the body, you mean?"

Holmes only nodded weakly, having accepted his fate. It was just, after all, he supposed.

"What would you do?" Watson asked.

"If I were you?" Holmes muttered. "Nothing. I'd leave...me here. Tell. the truth..."

Realization dawned on Watson's face. "That you left hospital and came here, and I couldn't save you."

Holmes nodded, smiling sadly. "Because you never...had any talent..for dissembling..."

He closed his eyes. Suddenly the pain he'd been fighting had begun to seem distant, and he'd ceased to be cold. The room had begun to feel close and warm and dark. He felt almost as though he were slipping into a drug-addled sleep.

"Watson," he whispered as one final thought occurred to him, "don't let Mrs. Hudson..."

He never concluded the thought, but Watson, after long years spent together in those rooms, knew more than enough to fill the blank in himself.

"Find the mess," he said. He rose to his feet and crossed the room to where the now still form of the detective lay on the sofa. He stared down at him, waiting to feel some grief, or at least remorse, before pushing aside the man's collar and pressing his fingers to the jugular vein.

There was no pulse. He was gone. And Watson was glad.


	9. Title Pending

Only once have I ever witnessed my friend Sherlock Holmes to engage in any display of affection where a woman was concerned with any degree of sincerity. I confess that at the time my actions could only be construed as eavesdropping, though I came to it, somewhat ironically, through purely honorable intentions. I had some vague inkling that Holmes and his client had known each other prior to the case in which she'd hired his services, but could not say to what extent until the morning following its conclusion. I had risen late, fatigued from the exertions of the case, and paused in the hallway before entering the sitting room as I heard two voices conversing. Recognizing that it was Holmes and his client speaking, and loath to inconvenience him since he was engaged, my first thought was to return to my room. However I was, I am chagrined to say, transfixed by what I heard to be the nature of their conversation.

She had commented upon something to the effect of his having come a long way from Montague street, and some friendly exchange had followed ending with him offering, if she ever needed anything, to come to her aid if she would only call. She waved this off gracefully at first, but seemed to think better of it. There was a silence. Then came the words that had frozen me in the hallway.

"Sherry -" she asked, making me fairly start at the familiarity of her address. Holmes seemed not bothered by it at all.

"Yes?"

"I do wish to ask you for one thing." Her tone had grown grave, and I detected something almost like incredulity or apprehension in Holmes' inflection when he replied:

"What?"

"A kiss," said the lady. Her voice had grown quiet and she spoke quickly, as though confessing some weakness. "One kiss, and that's as far as it will go."

There was another long moment of silence at this. I heard Holmes shift uncomfortably on the sofa, and at this point I peered around the corner into the sitting room wide eyed and ready to make an 'untimely' entrance upon an awkward scene, should it become prudent to break one up.

"Why?" Holmes demanded at last. He and the lady were seated at opposite ends of the sofa, which I was viewing from behind, though I suppose when she glanced down before replying it was to worry the hem of a sleeve or fiddle with a handkerchief. When she spoke, her voice had only become quieter, and was thick with emotion.

"Because I want to know what it's like coming from a man who's letting you have something. As opposed to wanting to have something from you."

She did not lift her eyes following this. As for Holmes, his features changed in a manner I have seen only rarely. It seemed to me he hadn't exactly been wearing the sardonic, aloof mask he normally employed as they'd been speaking, as I'd read open suspicion and confusion on his face when he'd questioned her as to the motives of her request. Now, however, his eyes softened, and a sort of knowing concern and sadness replaced the mistrust in them. Beneath this, still, was something of the furtive, feral quality I had observed in him in those rare moments that I'd seen him let his guard down previously - like a patient who does not trust his doctor that what's about to happen wont hurt, actually. Nonetheless, when he next spoke, it was to say:

"Alright."

His client's gaze flickered back up to meet his, her eyes damp and vaguely surprised. She only stared at him at first, opening her mouth once as though to say something, but closing it without speaking. Holmes shifted where he sat a bit awkwardly, running his tongue over his lips and glancing away, then back to her with a questioning expression that I read to say _how do you want to do this?_

After a moment's gathering her nerve, she slid closer to him and laid a hand on his shoulder, her movements slow and strangely careful. Holmes looked down at her, eyes candid and features open and frank. Her gaze flicked down to his mouth once, then back up to meet his, before she finally leaned towards him. His only movement was to incline his head slightly, and close his eyes, as their lips met.

In the spectrum of kisses I have seen, it appeared perfectly genuine. At first Holmes made little response and merely let her kiss him, but there was no sense that he was holding anything back. Finally he began to return her actions in kind, although with a certain tentativeness, as if to avoid scaring her off. It was a long, slow, kiss. Neither of them pulled away at its conclusion, each drawing back slightly in equal measure, seemingly loath to move away from one another too quickly. Her actions I had greater difficulty interpreting, though Holmes seemed determined not to run before she did. They sat there, lips still poised over one another's, each a bit flushed and breathing a bit quicker until at last the lady rose to her feet. Holmes' eyes as well as his posture followed her as she stood.

After this, I know little of what happened, save that I heard nothing except her retreating footsteps and the closing of the sitting room door as I made my own hasty retreat back down the hall to my room. I suppose she merely rose and left, without saying a word. In any event, after the shock of witnessing such an exchange, I had suddenly come to myself and realized with no small sense of shame that I had been spying, however unwittingly, on something of an intimate moment which I had in no way been invited to be privy to. It was a lack of any idea what to do - how to make reparations or indeed if any such thing was in order - not cowardice, which sent me back to my room. Save drawing up an account of the incident, for no other purpose than to settle events in my own mind, I've made no mention of the lady, her request, or its singular result since it occurred. When I did finally make my entrance upon the sitting room that day, I found Holmes still seated upon the sofa, his slim body angled into a corner, melancholy and contemplative. He never made any comment on the affair, and only smoked cigarette upon cigarette that morning before finally going out. To my knowledge, we have had no word from his unusual client since.


	10. The Needle

It takes some dexterity. Tie up. Hold the tourniquet tight with your teeth. Drawing the proper dosage into the syringe is more a matter of feel than sight, now. Your body quivers with anticipation. You feel the hunger for what the syringe contains. But you don't think about it. You can't. You can't think about any of this, anymore.

If you thought about it, slipping the needle into the vein would feel like an act of self-mutilation. You'd hate yourself for this.

But, what can you do?

It's too late. You're a dead man already. An automaton - clockwork - and this is the oil you run on. You were dealt the fatal wound years ago. Now, this borrows you time.

The feeling is like an electric shock. The same stab and twinge, then the tingling in your veins. You close your eyes and gasp. The tourniquet on your arm and the syringe in your hand - indeed, the rest of the world - is forgotten while the initial reaction washes over you. Both slip to the floor, one with a hiss and the other a clatter. For a moment, your senses are overwhelmed, a light burning behind your eyes and a warmth smoldering in your limbs. Then reality begins to fade back in. You feel that you are panting. You feel the perspiration on your brow. You feel that your heart is hammering.

Numbness hums in your brain.

You lie back on your bed, listening to the gears in your head whirr meaninglessly. Your heart's still pounding, but it's slowing. It will only continue to do so, you fancy - it will slow down to nothing, each beat growing fainter, until its the barest flutter of a breeze in your chest. It will run itself down, like your mind, and soon you wont feel it, either. You'll melt right into your bedspread.

It doesn't matter to you then, that you'll go. You're not thinking of the people you'd leave behind. You quit thinking of them when the hunger for the needle drowned out your hatred and fear of it. You almost remember them - there is one who'd be sad to see you go, you think - but as you roll your head to the side to stare at your locked door, it's as though a cool, liquid hand - sugar-water viscous - reaches out to stroke your hair, lulling your reason back into slumber.

Don't think of that.

That will hurt.

When you're with me, you're with me.

They don't matter.

You close your eyes.

Lying there with your senses muffled by the white-noise buzz in your head almost feels like sleep. It's been perilously long since you've slept, and your body is starved for it. If only you could, for just a moment. But, your body and mind cant agree on the subject - one craving rest and the other action. Like two crying children, sitting side by side, they are equally desperate, equally helpless.

And people say you're brilliant.

You hate it, sometimes, the way your mind works. You hate it, and you love it. You are what you are, and one thing alone in the world has ever brought you any satisfaction - but you need it so much, it's killing you.

It's exactly like the drug. No one should grudge you the use of the drug. In all areas of your life, it seems, you're doomed to crave what hurts you.

You open your eyes.

Grey light is coming in through your window, soft and diffuse, filtered through the clouds and the soot and the fog in the atmosphere. From your window, the rooftops of the building beside yours are outlined against the sky - craggy, chimney-dotted silhouettes.

You're lying at the center of a huge city, you think.

And no one knows you're here.

No one knows what you're doing.

The thought doesn't bother you, though. You're good at being alone.

You lie there and watch the clouds roll past the rooftops, twisting and coiling into one another. And, all too soon, you're coming back to yourself.

You feel a surge of dismay. Your jaw clenches. You want to cry out that it isn't fair. Couldn't you have escaped for any longer? You'd taken as much as you dared.

Once - just once - couldn't you come back from the drug, and not hurt?

But you are hurting, once again. Your transgression only bought you scant moment's numbness. Like a wounded patient who's painkiller is wearing off, the ache is coming on stronger and stronger.

You sit up slowly. You prop your elbows on your knees, and fold your arms over your head.

What are you going to do?

You can't keep doing this. It isn't enough, anymore. You can't go on like this.


	11. Cursum Perficio

I'd sent my last telegram. All the cogs and gears of what I'd built were now in place, ready to turn, ready to set the effects of a life's work into motion. The clerk at the telegraph office was smiling congenially at me.

"Will that be all, Mr. Holmes?"

My grasp lingered on the edge of the blue folder, just for a moment.

"Yes," I said.

My grip loosened.

The paper board slid between my fingertips.

The clerk turned to place the folder in pigeon hole M.

"Quite. Thank you."

As quickly as that, I was a dead man.

_a/n: My first crack at drabble writing – and I managed to hit precisely 99 words. Count 'em. Feel free to post a review with your congratulations :D_


	12. The Adventure of the Unsolved Crime

Although I had never revealed to Watson the actual date of my birth, this had not stopped him seeking, apparently by some process of elimination, to determine it. He may have supposed that, since he had only three hundred and sixty five days in a year to choose from, he could only draw so many wrong conclusions before he hit upon the right one. In any event, every year he seemed to choose a date at random - by throwing darts at a calendar, for all I knew - so that I myself never knew when I was to be set upon with gifts and harried into eating cake. As amusing as this was, my landlady at least equaled my flat mate's efforts by her own contribution to the festivities, if she did not surpass them.

Annually, on the random date the two of them conspired to agree I had aged another year, I was for reasons I could only conjecture at treated to a Scotswoman's interpretation of French cuisine. Although, to be fair, I suppose her reasoning was not so opaque. In spite of the fact that I had not been to France since I was very young and hardly remembered the place, nor ever had much connection to my family there, I had once, under the influence of a chemically induced good mood, told Mrs. Hudson that her ratatouille (which had actually had more in common with an English stew) reminded me of something my grandmother had used to make. It was an utter lie, but the good woman had glowed with pride as though all her goals in life had been accomplished. This I suppose was conclusive.

In any event, this year's hopelessly Anglican coq a vin and fruit tart which was probably as traditional amongst my French relations as it was unrecognizable to me, were remarkable not for their obvious if well intentioned failings, and it was not actually the sentiment behind them which was currently making me smile. It was not any chemical I'd seen fit to abuse, either.

It was the fact that, on top of the tart, Mrs. Hudson had constructed a crime scene out of piecrust figures.

One piecrust man lay prone and was obviously the victim. Several others stood over this, looking on in apparent perplexity. The gory red-ness of some fruit in the tart made the effect all the more shocking. It was the most ghastly pastry I had ever seen, it was making Watson uncomfortable, and I had never had a birthday cake I liked better.

It also constituted the first case to come my way that year in which I failed to make any headway.

All the evidence was eaten before I could make a proper examination of it.


	13. An Erroneous Conclusion

He did not know why he did it. It was nothing more than the most ephemeral of whims. But, on an impulse, he folded his hand around the razor in his palm and squeezed.

He had not even been looking for such an implement. Nor had he anticipated finding one. The razor had simply been on the deal table amongst his chemical things, and was discovered as he was tidying them up.

He laid his head in one hand thoughtfully, watching with idle, matter of fact eyes as three great red drops welled up where his fingers curled against his palm and fell to the worn surface of the table with a successive _drip...drip...drip_. Three notes in common time, staccato. The droplets burst against the tabletop, pearl-red for a moment, then darkening to a near black as they spread out and were absorbed by the wood, melding into the mosaic of already present stains. They began to slow, after a moment, and so he tightened his grip around the razor, maintaining the tempo.

If it hurt him to do so, he gave no sign of it.

Indeed, the doctor, seated in the armchair behind him, believed he had only paused to watch some happening in the street outside, and been disappointed by it.

In actuality, he was not far off the mark in his conjecture as to the detective's reaction to what he saw, and had only erred in regard to its nature.

At last, when the stain on the table had grown and spread, bleeding into the fibers of the wood much as it had run through his own veins, Holmes fancied, he opened his hand and let the razor fall from his grasp. It clattered onto the table, ringing as thin, metallic objects are wont to do, as he studied his savaged palm. He watched the blood continue to well up in the deep tracks the razor had dug and begin to flood the crevices. The starkness of the red against the paleness of his skin was enough to catch his interest for a moment.

The way in which the injuries hurt him was something clinically evaluated by his mind - examined, and then discarded as being of little consequence. He did not care. There was no bitterness, or bravado, or remorse in the sentiment. He watched himself bleed, and it meant - as literally and definitively as a mathematical proof meant it's conclusion - nothing to him. The act of hurting himself had been merely one more boundary he had tried and broken, seeking escape - and yet it had brought no release from the monotony of his existence. The pain and the blood and the cuts in his hand were useless, like so much else.

Meaningless.

With this conclusion, he rose to his feet, curling the wounded hand into a fist again, palm up as though in an effort not to spill blood on the floor. Robotically, he retreated to his room, if only because it seemed no worse place to be than anywhere else.

Sometime later, Watson would rise from his chair and see the bloodied razor lying atop the stained deal table. He would stand over it, brushing a fingertip along the gore-streaked edge, and the wounds whose existence he would infer would mean far more pain and sorrow to him than they had the man who had inflicted them upon himself.


	14. A Discussion of Ethics

In the space of the last minute, Holmes had looked up from the breakfast he was only picking at, opened his mouth as though to speak, shaken his head, and gone back to idly pushing eggs around his plate with a fork a total of three times.

My curiosity as to what he might be having such difficulty putting into words was growing exponentially with time, to say the least.

I had always known him to be possessed of a certain eloquence, an actor's flair for expression, and few qualms about making his opinions known regardless of how they might be received. How came about his present loss for words, then? What could be so delicate a subject that he could not think of a way to discuss it? And why did he seem to feel that he must discuss it with me? Dozens of scenarios had flooded my mind as I searched for an answer.

Had he met a girl?

Did he wish my advice?

Did he have some kind of horrible news which he was reluctant to spoil the morning with?

As unlikely as perhaps a few of these thoughts were, I nonetheless could not rule them out on his waffling alone.

When for a fourth time he looked up and seemed on the verge of saying something, only to affect a lame retreat by reaching for the coffee pot instead, I demanded:

"Speak, Holmes, or you will drive us both mad."

He flashed a quick, vaguely sheepish smile my way as he filled a cup from the coffee pot and proceeded to add to it an obscene amount of sugar. "Sorry, old man. I had a question. I got a bit caught up in debating the merit of actually asking it with myself."

"That is quite enough sugar, I think," I pointed out quickly.

"I think it is not," Holmes shot back, a scowl threatening to knit his brows.

I could only sigh at him disapprovingly. "What was your question?"

"Well..." he considered, taking a sip of the coffee - which had probably acquired the consistency of treacle for all the sugar he'd added to it - "I was wondering if I might have your opinion on something. A matter of morality, if you will."

"I see," I replied, and fairly started in protest as he reached for the sugar bowl again. "Really, Holmes!"

"You may take your coffee how you like it," he snapped, adding a few more lumps to the cup at his elbow. "How I take mine is not your concern."

"I have a question."

"Really."

"How is it that you still have teeth?"

Holmes glared and added still more sugar, undoubtedly out of sheer spite.

"Now, what was your question?" I asked.

Holmes sighed, taking another sip of coffee before setting the cup down to prop his elbows on the table before him and press his fingertips together.

"Well, I've been considering," he said, gazing thoughtfully into space, "the notion of apologizing."

"Apologizing?"

"Mm. Do you think, Watson, that if one has done...something...he should apologize simply because social mores require it of him?"

"It helps if his heart is in it," I offered, a certain uneasiness beginning to creep up on me at the direction the discussion was taking.

"Ah! Yes," cried Holmes, pointing a finger at me excitedly. "You've struck at the very core of the matter. What if he is _not_ sorry?"

"Should he be sorry?" I demanded, and meant it literally, not rhetorically. I was beginning to grow very worried about what he might have done.

"That's beside the point," Holmes said, waving a hand dismissively.

"What could be more _to_ the point?"

"Well, who decides the parameters that govern when I ought to be sorry, Watson? An entirely different question, you'll agree. And in any case, since we have chosen to presume, hypothetically, that I am not sorry, it follows that I would only dispute the conclusions of whoever thinks I ought to be sorry anyways."

"But we agree you should apologize."

"Not at all. The point was that social mores dictate that I should apologize."

"Isn't that -"

"It is hardly the same thing to say what social mores require and to say they are correct in requiring it."

I sat back in my chair and crossed my arms over my chest, a trifle annoyed. "Very well. If we're going to take a completely amoral tack, I would say that it depends whom you've wronged."

Holmes' brows rose slightly and he nodded in consideration. "I see."

"In Mrs. Hudson's case, for instance, you should definitely take preemptive measures to apologize - because we both know how things go when she discovers something you've done and must confront you about it after the fact."

"Good point," said Holmes.

"You should also apologize if it's me, because I'm going to pummel you if you don't."

"Watson -"

"And I may anyways, depending upon what you've done -"

"I didn't say -"

"Is it my umbrella again, Holmes?"

"Did I say we were talking about something _I've_ done? Would you like some facts to go with your conjectures,Watson?"

"You said we were talking about you!"

"I never did!"

"You said 'I'! You said 'social mores dictate _I_ should apologize'!"

Holmes threw up his hands with a snarl of frustration "I was speaking _hypothetically_, Watson. 'I' there was meant to indicate 'I' in the general sense, not 'I' as in 'me, Holmes.'"

I felt my face screw up into a look of incredulity at what I felt to be a complete load of bollocks. "'I' in the _general_ sense?" I repeated.

Holmes sighed and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms.

"Holmes. How is referring to oneself, the individual, general? There is no general sense of -"

"Alright, '_he,'_ then! He, the unspecified, unidentified everyman. Just go back and edit everything I've said so far, replacing 'I' with 'he.'"

"I still think you've done something," I grumbled.

Holmes leaned forward and planted his elbows on the table, smacking his head into his hands petulantly. "This is ridiculous. I try and engage you in a philosophical discussion -"

"Perhaps if the discussion had not begun upon a fallacy."

"What are you talking about?"

"Perhaps, if you'd started with: 'Watson, I have committed such and such a misdeed, and in light of this have been lead to question -"

"_That_ would have been a fallacy, as I have done nothing."

"Oh," I said with mock reassurance, waving a hand blithely, "well, that settles things, then. Because you have never lied before."

Holmes folded his arms on the table and glared at me stonily. "If I am ever so foolish as to engage you in conversation over a question of this nature again," he snapped, "would you do me the courtesy of dispensing with some of your preconceived notions and considering facts objectively?"

"The fact is that the question of your moral polarity, or whether you can really be said to carry the charge at all, somewhat eclipses other considerations in my mind when we begin discussing ethics."

"I noted," Holmes said icily, and dumped another healthy spoonful of sugar into his coffee. I frowned at him and briefly considered the irony of the operative adjective, given the circumstances.

We sat in silence a few moments, I finishing my toast unassumingly while Holmes clanked his spoon around within his coffee cup in frustration, attempting to stir the sugar he'd added to it into the already saturated solution. At length, he smacked the spoon onto the table and determinedly took a sip, only to grimace and plunk the mug down dejectedly beside it. He sighed resignedly and propped his chin in one hand, regarding the ruined coffee with an air of disappointment.

"You know," I thought at last to remark, "It would be a wise maneuver, and also convenient, to apologize to Mrs. Hudson when she comes to collect these dishes..."

Holmes' eyes snapped up from the coffee cup to scowl at me contemptuously. "Watson," he said sternly, "I have no reason to apologize to Mrs. Hudson."

"Because you're not sorry, or because -"

"Because I haven't _done_ anything, for the last time!"

I considered this for an instant, since he insisted upon it with such vehemence, glancing down at my plate and fiddling with my discarded silverware briefly.

"Are you sure?" I pressed, looking back up at him.

"Yes!" he cried. "Look, if I had really done something, don't you think _someone_ would have noticed something amiss by now? And yet, but for the suggestion of some action for which I might be sorry, nothing out of order has happened this morning, at all!"

I frowned at him, taking his point, but still unsure as to its sincerity.

"Have _you_ discovered anything wrong?" Holmes asked, gesturing at me forcefully.

"No," I admitted, "nothing yet -"

"And you've been up and about the house, and have even gone so far as to shave, dress, and ready your medical bag before breakfast as you have an early appointment with a patient today."

"Yes," I conceded further, attempting briefly to piece together how he knew. "How did -"

"Never mind. Really, Watson, don't you think that if any catastrophe had occurred, whether I were to blame or no, you'd have come across _some _indication of it, for all that? By the way, you'll note, when you go downstairs, that your umbrella is leaning beside the front door as you left it."

I considered this further, fingering my mustache thoughtfully, and at last indicated my agreement with a cautious nod. "I suppose all of that's true - and I suppose, since it's so easily verified, I can trust you about the umbrella..."

"Thank you," Holmes muttered with the barest hint of sarcasm.

I still was not satisfied, however, as to his innocence where Mrs. Hudson was concerned.

So, when she did arrive to clear up breakfast, I took the opportunity to engage in a little detective work of my own.

"It was wonderful, Mrs, Hudson, thank you," I smiled in appreciation as I handed her my empty plate. She received only an assenting twitch of the shoulders from the uncommunicative Holmes, but stated pleasantly that she was glad we'd enjoyed things anyways as she gathered the remaining dishes onto the tray.

"Your morning is going well, I trust?" I asked her as she was about to go. I had attempted to do so casually, but she still paused halfway to the door with a look of surprise, before casting a suspicious glance at Holmes.

"Why," she asked slowly, "might it have gone otherwise...?"

The conclusion she had jumped to was by no means lost on my companion, and he slumped in his chair with an exasperated cry of "Oh, bloody hell on a bike."

"_Mr._ Holmes!" Mrs. Hudson scolded. Before she could lecture him any further on the language he chose to employ, however, I interjected pleasantly:

"It's nothing like that, Mrs. Hudson. I was merely making conversation. But since you bring it up...?"

She glanced back at me questioningly.

"Well, you haven't noticed anything amiss," I clarified, "have you?"

"No, doctor," she replied, shaking her head. Then, with a final reproving glance at Holmes, "But I'll keep an eye out, in case I should!"

Holmes, for his part, smiled facetiously and bid her a glibly bright "Good morning, Mrs. Hudson!" as she swished from the room.

"Now are you convinced?" he scowled at me once she'd gone.

Truth be told, I was still a bit reluctant to do so, but having, I felt, no more ground to stand on, I merely shrugged in acquiescence. "Very well, Holmes, I am sorry I impugned your character. It was a wholly philosophical question you asked and your dilemma finds no expression in reality."

Holmes sighed as though relieved, waving a hand in an _at last_ sort of gesture. "Thank you Watson. Apology accepted."

This would have been an end of matters if Mrs. Hudson had not burst back into the room an instant later.

I jumped, startled by her sudden entrance, whirling around in my chair. "What is it?" I asked.

I confess I had half expected to find her a vision of outrage, a charred and mangled sofa pillow, cleverly wrested from its hiding place, or some such, in her grasp. Instead she strode quickly to the table, a telegram in her hand. It was by no means lost on me, however, that Holmes observed all this with the look of a patient who expects to receive a condemning diagnosis.

"This just came for you, sir," said Mrs. Hudson, laying the telegram before him. "The boy who delivered it said it was very urgent."

"Thank you, Mrs. Hudson," Holmes replied tightly as she took her leave. He did not open the telegram immediately, however, but merely frowned down at it, tapping a long, white finger on the envelope as though gathering his resolve.

"It's postmarked from Whitehall," I noted with some fascination and suspense.

"Yes," groaned Holmes.

"Well, aren't you going to open it? Mrs. Hudson indicated it was urgent."

He frowned at it a moment longer, before heaving a sigh and tearing the envelope open with the same air of getting-it-over-with with which one removes a plaster from a wound.

He glanced over it quickly, his face falling as though some unhappy suspicion of his had been confirmed, before rising from the table with a dogged roll of his eyes and striding off towards his room without a word.

"Holmes!" I protested before he could get very far.

"What?" he muttered with a glance back over his shoulder.

"Where are you going?"

"Well," he said, "if we take the same amoral tack you suggested in our philosophical conversation of earlier, you could say I am fleeing the country."

I narrowed my eyes, staring at him in surprise and perplexity. "Why? What was in the telegram?"

"It's from my brother. He wires to say that he'll be dropping by shortly."

I blinked at him a moment further before suddenly, like the switch being thrown on an electrical circuit, all the ideas we had discussed that morning fit together in my mind. My eyes widened as the inevitable conclusion emerged, as obvious as a blinking light bulb.

"Oh," I said slowly. "You've decided not to apologize."

Holmes, in spite of himself, grinned. "My dear Watson, your inferential skills are coming along brilliantly. Now, if Mycroft asks, you haven't seen me in days."

With that, he took himself off to his room, and undoubtedly employed his window and the fire escape as means of an exit, for he seemed to all but vanish.

I was left to smoke alone in a brown study, contemplating the moral dilemma of whether or not one could be justified in lying to cover the fact that he'd failed to bring a question of a similar type to a satisfactory conclusion earlier that morning.


	15. Heritage

It may have been his mother's violin, but the Vuillaume was still a stranger.

Technically, it was his, now. When he was thirteen she'd given it to him - called him to her bedside and told him the story of how Paganini had given his own instrument by that maker to his only student, as a parting gift - but he had never made a habit of playing it. He had grown up hearing it - played mostly by her hand, and once or twice a virtuoso to whom she had lent it for a concert. He understood what it was.

It was almost a mythical thing. A serendipitous accident of nature, as something so perfect could never have been wrought through human intention alone. He had never felt worthy of it. He hadn't so much as ventured to touch it, while it was hers.

Once it was his - once her hands had grown too weak to hold it and she could play it no more herself - he'd found that he still could not. To do so would have been betrayal. To do so would have been to acknowledge that this Vuillaume, too, was a parting gift.

He had only played it once, because she had asked him to.

So she could hear it one last time.

He had never found the notes so difficult.

Now, the Vuillaume stared up at him from within its case, cold and mute as a specter. It had known abandonment, too, he supposed. He'd left it behind when he'd gone to university, and it had been in Sherrinford's care since. His eldest brother's decision to sell off some of the family's old belongings following his father's death had forced him to return and claim it now.

He stood over the case a long time, the instrument within looking up at him without recognizing him, until at last he moved, slipping his fingers beneath the neck as though taking the hand of an old companion who's acquaintance he was reluctant to renew.

The wood was cold. Not warm and smooth and well remembered, like his own instrument. He tucked the violin under his shoulder gingerly, feeling how it fit beneath his chin, the curve of the instrument pressing against his throat. He must play it now, he felt - this ideal of a thing, this emblem of tragedy - or put it away and never touch it again. He could not stand to think about it any further, and there were but two venues of retreat open to him - into music, or out of the room entirely.

He drew in a breath between his teeth and shut his eyes.

The thought processes required to lift the bow to the strings and move his fingers over them had over the years become so intimate with action as to be indistinguishable from reflex. For once, his mind was not the chiefly operating facet of his character, and he let it fall silent.

The first note was long and drawn out. A low, open string - the instrument speaking for itself for the first time in a decade with a voice pure and intense as a ray of light. There was the familiar feeling of something catching almost painfully in his chest at the tone. A second higher note followed - and then a third and a fourth, and finally a climbing, intricate scale capped off by an aching double stop. The piece grew in complexity, notes ringing out clearly and then resonating together, beginning as a funeral dirge and picking up tempo to weave itself into a torrential chaconne.

He would not remember the piece he'd improvised, or its duration, when at last the final note had died down and he'd simply had nothing more to play, feeling empty and as dry as tinder within.

He stood panting, eyes shut, head hung over the instrument still tucked against his shoulder. It felt different, now. The strings bent responsively to his fingers where they rested against them, and the wood was warm, seeming to hum with his own pulse where it pressed against his throat. Every nuance of the instrument - the spacing of the strings, the curve of the bridge, where each note lay - had become familiar, part of him through muscle memory. The ache in his chest that had welled up at the purity of the tone had been replaced by something that rose and fell in harmony with it.

Slowly, he laid the bow back in the case and lowered the violin from his shoulder. The grain of the wood caught the light and flashed elusively through the dark varnish, like a yellow flame through smoke, as he did so.

_I was wrong_, he thought, looking down at the instrument in his hands.

_I was wrong about it._

The Vuillaume may have been his mother's violin. He may have felt, as he played it, the record of her shaking hands in the worn ebony of the finger board. He may have recalled how nights when it played lullabies had become nights when the deep, ringing tone had drowned out his father's rages. He may have been reminded that, when his mother had fallen ill, he'd had no one left to protect him.

But, the Vuillaume had not become a stranger.

They shared a history, he and this abandoned violin.

_AN: Thanks to MrsPencil for helping me out with this one :)_


	16. The Empty House, Epilogue

It did not occur to me until I took up my pen to record the events surrounding my dear friend's sudden return how thoroughly Sherlock Holmes had lied concerning his account of what took place at the Reichenbach falls.

And, to my almost greater surprise, what a poor job he'd done of it.

Once I had set things down in order on paper, after the shock of his reappearance had abated, the contradictions in his story became staggeringly clear. Why should professor moriarty, a man near twice his age, seek to challenge him hand to hand, alone, at such an unlikely and remote spot? And what of the sudden appearance of colonel Moran while he lay upon the ledge above the falls? Why would Moran, a sharpshooter in possession of a remarkable rifle, hurl rocks at him? Holmes story raised more questions than it answered. And while I was on the one hand loath to impugn his integrity over a subject that between us was somewhat delicate, I knew Holmes and myself well enough to acknowledge that, had he really intended to deceive me as to the events of his supposed death, he could have constructed a story which would have appeared to me air tight. Indeed, his tale seemed so rife with careless oversights as to give his deception an air of half heartedness - as though he wanted me to find him out. It was this thought which lead me, one evening, to confront him.

His behavior had become more polarized than ever in those early days of his return to London. By turns he would seek out my company almost with a repressed sort of desperation, but most often he was aloof and withdrawn to a greater degree than I had ever known him to be before his disappearance, confining himself to his room, always with the shades drawn and the lamps turned down. He did go out nights, sometimes until dawn, but on the evening in question I was pleased to find him at home. I knocked on his door softly, and when he answered with a "yes, Watson," entered.

He was lighting the lamp on the table beside his bed as I stood in the doorway, the vesta glowing in his hand and casting yellow light eerily on his pale features, although somehow this did nothing to soften the harsh, silvery, near luminosity of his eyes. I did not remember them being so, even if they had been remarkable, before he'd disappeared. In the almost complete darkness of his room the effect was more feral and striking than ever.

"What is it?" he asked, leaning with one palm on the edge of the table and the other hand in his pocket. I looked down at the pages of my half written account in my hands, piecing together my words with care before replying.

"Holmes. How is it that you came alive out of the Reichenbach falls?"

Even to my ear, my voice was slow and quiet, the question posed delicately, as though if I were to handle the situation too roughly the fragile bond that had begun to form once again between my old friend and I would be shattered, like a fractured bone beginning to mend.

Holmes looked at me a long time without replying. At last, he merely sat down on his bed, resting his elbows on his knees and staring contemplatively at the floor. In the half light of the room, his dark hair stood out in all the more contrast to his ghostly pale skin, making him look almost more like a photograph than a living, breathing human being.

"I wondered if you wouldn't ask me that question again before long," he said finally.

Tentatively, I made my way into the room, moving to stand across from where he sat. I laid the pages of my manuscript on the bedside table, fingering them thoughtfully, before leaning against it myself.

"Can you tell me?" I asked.

Holmes was statue still, eyes glued to the floor. Silence seemed to reign in the room for an eternity. Finally, he did look up at me, and my first thought was that I had never seen him look so desperate and sad. My second thought, I am ashamed to say, was one of shock, disbelief, and fear when all the subtleties of the change that had come over him finally hit home to me.

"Watson," he whispered, and for the first time I remarked the length and sharpness of the teeth where a man's canines would have been, "I did not come back alive from Reichenbach falls."


	17. Failure

221 B, Baker Street, was dim and cold. Outside, the clouds that hung low over the slick, dark stone structures of the London metropolis were dropping down thin curtains of freezing sleet. Sherlock Holmes left his damp hat and coat in the sitting room before crossing to his bedroom, feeling the cold of the bare floor boards seep through his socks as he left the insulation of the hearth rug.

It was dark in his room, so he lit the lamp that stood on the small table beside his bed, shaking out the match to leave a long, thin whisker of grey smoke curling towards the ceiling. He watched this shiver in a draft, and then disappear. The flame of the lamp guttered and wavered, a dull red behind its smoke-darkened glass. The match lay blackened and disintegrating on the scarred surface of the table.

Holmes was tired. His latest case had been long and grueling, and had ended in a manner he could only identify as failure. He ran a hand through his hair, shaking himself from his brief trance, and slowly began to slip out of his suit jacket and waistcoat. Both seemed unaccountably heavy and cumbersome. When at last he stood beside his bed in his shirtsleeves, he felt the effort of a nightshirt too great, and fell onto the coverlet, half dressed.

He felt numb. Whether the gears in his brain had seized completely, or had simply ceased to mesh and were now whirring meaninglessly, disconnected from their work, he could not tell. In either case, he couldn't think. He could not move from the facts he held at present to any form of conclusion, could not conceive of an idea which would order the events of the previous weeks in his mind and give them meaning. He was stuck at what he knew.

He had been too late.

The denouement of the case played back in his mind as readily and vividly as though he had never left the house in Surrey. He may as well have been there now, standing in the dusty, spartan confines while Lestrade's men frantically searched the premises, overtaken by the strongest sense that something was wrong. That moment felt more real than did this one, in which he was lying on his bed, aware that his body was exhausted but feeling no more connected to it than a ghost.

He stood in the midst of the chaotic activity of the Yard's search, eyes roving around him mechanically, looking for anything that would make clear to him why he knew something was not right. An epiphany came to him that way, sometimes. A conclusion would occur to him so suddenly that he would have to think backwards, to repeat his own observations to himself and rebuild the chain of logic which would explain why he knew what he knew.

There was nothing in the empty room. He looked through the open doorway to the single chamber beyond. Nothing. He looked out the window.

Then he understood. Watson saw it in his face.

"Holmes?" the doctor asked, and the activity in the room stilled.

Beyond the window lay a small courtyard, bounded on one side by a wooden fence, rotting and broken through in places, and the windowless brick walls of factory buildings on the others. Sparse yellow grass struggled up through the hard packed soil in patches.

In the center of the courtyard, a stray dog was rooting gingerly through a broad smear of black ash.

Smoke rose from it in spectral tentacles, still.

The abrupt end to so long and high-pitched a struggle felt to Holmes like a collision with a solid object, and he was silent a few moments before finally turning to Lestrade.

"Call your men off," he said flatly. "She was dead long before we arrived."

_A/N: Does this read like it's finished, or not quite?_


	18. Survival

Events unfolded as if in slow motion. He felt a wave of heat rise over him, saw the metal sheeting of the roof at the far end of the warehouse buckling and deforming, collapsing in on itself as though the sudden upward rush of heat had created a vacuum that sucked it downwards. By the time the wall of flame burst through it he had turned on his heel to flee along the spine of the roof.

He went three steps before the blast hit him.

It flung him forward like a physical blow - like being struck by a train - picking him up and rag-dolling him through space. He felt distantly the heat of flames licking at his clothing, an inferno blooming around him, and sensed the roof folding on itself again to rear up behind him like a great, molten black tidal wave.

The force of the explosion rocketed him over the remaining length of the warehouse to hurl him into the Thames in a rain of debris. He struck the water hard.

He knew when he had exchanged the blinding light and heat of the flames for the dark, murky coldness of the water, but felt that he was experiencing it only by proxy - as though the initial force of the blast had somehow carried him far away, and he was watching what followed happen to someone else.

He knew that the man in the water should be moving. He should be making some effort not to sink. It should have bothered him that he couldn't breathe, for instance, but it didn't - he hadn't been able to breath in the smoke and the flames, either. When he finally did escape the water, it was another's arms, and not his own, that drug him towards the surface. They closed around his chest and he felt himself hoisted against a figure behind him.

When his head broke the surface the lapp of the waves, the slosh of debris around him, the towering funnel of smoke that was the burning warehouse in the distance and the traffic in the busy shipping lanes of the Thames all conspired to assault his abused senses and very nearly succeeded in dragging him back into his own body. He was there for an instant, blinking water from his eyes and viewing the world as distorted through the drops in his lashes, and then lost his hold, slipping away again like a drowning man sinking back into the current.

The arms around his chest loosened as other pairs of hands sought a hold on the shoulders of his coat and his collar. He was hoisted over the gunwale of a small vessel and lain, water sodden and limp as a corpse, on the rough planks of the deck.

A figure loomed over him. Said: _C'mon, lad - breathe_. He was struck in the face. Although he felt the actual slap as if insulated from the blow by some sort of thick curtain, it wrenched his head to the side, and this _hurt_. He ached, he realized, and saw the water droplets again. He was stuck a second time, and gasped, then coughed. His lungs and throat burned with a rawness that made him breathe gingerly, hissingly. He coughed again and tasted a mist of blood in his mouth.

But, he was breathing. He had experienced a strange reversal of positions, and now the moments before - the explosion and the time in the water - were the things that felt distant. He felt as though he had woken from sleeping - suddenly conscious and aware, memories prior to that abrupt dawn of lucidity now seeming fantastic and dream-like.

The figure stooping over him was speaking again, as he blinked against the water in his eyes and the harsh sunlight and his disorientation, but nothing it said registered. One concept dominated his shaken mind, as it slowly began to reason again in fits and starts.

_Bloody hell_, he thought. He looked past the figure towards the sky.

_I'm alive_.

_A/N: Ambiguous to a fault, I know. The setting makes it fit the fandom, though, I think. As for the character it refers to, take your pick. I sort of favor this as the story of how Lestrade acquired that 'inward twist' to his left foot that Holmes refers to in BOSC, for variety's sake. _


	19. Also a Case of Identity

"It was an experiment" is an incredibly versatile excuse.

When it fails, looking grim and muttering "Moriarty" generally works.

In this case the former wouldn't do because it would have been the truth _and_ I didn't want to be blamed for what had happened to the sitting room. The latter, however...

Mrs. Hudson blanched, pressing a palm to her cheek before realizing it was still coated in flour from the baking the explosion had interrupted and knotting her hands into her apron.

"Oh, my," she breathed, "They set fire to your rooms?"

She said it, not I. I simply nodded.

* * *

_A/N: Everyone remember this from FINA?_


	20. Another Case of Identity

It was _that _look again. Holmes' lips pursed for an instant, then one side of his mouth drew up into a crooked grin.

This was usually indicative of trouble brewing.

In this case, what sort of trouble became apparent when he paused suddenly to gather a handful of snow and begin forming it into a ball.

I did not like where this was going.

"Holmes!" I cautioned, putting some distance between us and holding up my hands, partly to show that I did _not_ wish to be hit by a snowball, and partly to remind him that I carried my heaviest stick in one of them and would hit him with _that_ if I were.

"Relax, Watson," he said, with a supercilious quirk of one brow, "I'm not going to throw this at you."

"Oh, _of course_," I returned sharply. "Because it's not as though I am the only target in sight - and _you_ would never lie to lull me into a false sense of security!"

"Here, then," Holmes sighed, stooping again to gather more snow.

This action was not reassuring, and I brandished my stick at him accordingly. "I mean it, Holmes! If you hit me with snow, I will hit you with this!"

I was surprised, however, when instead of hurling either snowball at me, he rose and held the second out like a peace offering.

"Here," he said, "you may take this one."

I lowered my stick, blinking at him querulously. "To ensure your good behavior, I take it?"

He shrugged in assent. "Mutually assured destruction."

I regarded the snowball resting in his gloved palm mistrustfully for a moment as I considered this proposal. I found it a bit unusual, to say the least. If Holmes really meant to stand down, and didn't intend to hit me with a snowball, why not drop the first one instead of making one for each of us? It seemed quite clear to me that, as usual, he was planning more than he was letting on. What his plans were, however, I was shortly forced to concede to being unable to divine.

I looked him in the face sternly. His grey eyes were frank and sincere beneath the snow-dusted brim of his hat.

Perhaps I could trust him?

Perhaps, it occurred to me suddenly, what was really afoot was that he had detected the possibility of some threat, further on. Maybe the tracks of one of his more mischief-minded irregulars had stood out to him amongst the morass of prints that was the footpath, for instance, and this was why he wished to be armed. This epiphany struck me in an instant, and immediately I felt it fit the facts. Of course - Holmes would make two snowballs because we had a better chance if we were each prepared with one!

Pleased to have unravelled the mystery so quickly and for once to be on the same page as my friend, I no longer hesitated to reach out and accept the proffered snowball with a smile of good will.

No sooner had I done so, however, than something inexplicable occurred.

Holmes whirled away suddenly, winding up for a mighty throw, and heaved the snowball into the air to sail away from us in an arcing, parabolic trajectory.

Following the path I judged it would travel lead me to the realization that I had, unfortunately, erred in concluding earlier that I had been the only snowball target in the vicinity. Inspector Lestrade stood a fair distance away from us, further down the embankment towards the serpentine, talking with a constable who must have been walking his beat through the park.

The instant the icy projectile my flatmate had launched met it's mark, splattering over the crown of the hat of the former, it also occurred to me that I now stood alone on the hill above the two policemen and very obviously held a snowball in my hands.

Holmes, the devil, had taken off running after he had thrown his.

The possibility that I had overlooked an alternative explanation for his strange behavior of earlier was by now, of course, clear, as was the prudence of making a quick retreat myself. I jumped and dropped the snowball in my hands as Lestrade whipped off his hat, shaking the snow from it furiously while simultaneously attempting to dislodge that which had fallen down his collar and shouting invectives at the miscreant he perceived in the distance. Being that _I_ was this miscreant, I turned on my heel quickly and fled after Holmes.

There was a good chance, I thought, as I raced to catch up with him, that Lestrade had not recognized me. I probably had little to fear in the way of arrests and doubted I would spend any time languishing in a cell, nursing thoughts of revenge.

However, I determined to waste no time, just in case.

Tracking Holmes down and killing him presently would undoubtedly be the best course of action.


	21. Revolver

_A/N: A drabble and a drouble on why Watson is the one who carries the revolver. This is actually like my third drabble, I think. I can't believe it. I used to find it impossible to limit myself to a set amount of words. _

_

* * *

_

"Are we going to eat, or dash off to the crime scene and leave dinner on the table?"

Holmes pocketed the telegram he'd just received. "Which would past experience lead you to expect?"

"You need to eat."

"I'm perfectly fine."

"Your hands are shaking."

"That's why you're carrying the revolver."

Watson paused to consider this revelation as his companion shrugged on a coat and bounded towards the door.

"Really?" he asked, snapping out of his reverie just in time to avoid being left behind. "Is that why, about the revolver?"

"That's why this time," Holmes called, hurrying down the stairs.

* * *

Try as I might, I cannot recall why I asked Watson, that first time, to bring his service revolver with him and yet managed to leave my hair trigger at home in my desk drawer.

What I do recall is that, had I been carrying a gun, I would have had a needless death on my hands.

It was a dangerous felon we sought to apprehend - a murderer - and at his first indication of drawing a weapon on us I had felt no compunctions towards putting a bullet in the fellow. Thus was I surprised, not only when I found myself groping reflexively for a revolver which was not there, but an instant later when Watson extended his hand to accept the harmless bundle of letters the man had drawn from within his coat.

This taught me something.

I knew already that, given the right circumstances, I was capable of taking a life with comparative ease. Watson - a physician to his core - was not prone to making the same mistakes as I.

The next time a dangerous case necessitated that one of us to be armed, I requested he bring his revolver again.

The hair trigger remains in my desk.


	22. Yet Another Case of Identity

_A/N: Have not really had much time for this lately, hence the long hiatus - but here are a few quick scribbles, because I missed writing. Not dead but still in Tibet :P_

* * *

It was not the reaction I'd expected, to say the least.

I had made my decision the previous evening, and after carrying out the deed wandered downstairs to the sitting room for breakfast. It was very early, and I was a bit dismayed to find Holmes still sitting at the deal topped table, still in wrinkled shirtsleeves, still poring over a notebook - as I'd left him the evening before.

"What are you working on?" I asked, innocently, as I thought, and stood behind him to peer over his shoulder.

"Mf?" he mumbled absently, glanced up to see me - and started violently, shooting to his feet and leaping back, toppling his chair in the process, hands raised as though to defend himself.

We both stood frozen, staring at each other, his grey eyes wide with shock as though I'd threatened his life.

"Good God!" he cried at length. "Watson! What have you done?"

"I've only shaved, Holmes," I frowned somewhat bashfully, fingering my bare upper lip. "Is it really that bad?"

"I didn't recognize you! Blazes - I thought someone had broken in."

"I didn't mean to frighten you," I offered.

"Well, you did!" retorted Holmes. He lowered his hands from their guard position, but still looked at me balefully.

He continued to do so throughout the breakfast I cajoled him into taking, though he only picked at his food.

When I left to dress the look he shot me was oddly suspicious. I received the same treatment when I returned to the sitting room to collect my bag before leaving to visit a patient.

No one else I met that day seemed to think much of my new lack-of-mustache, but when I returned home that evening Holmes' strange behavior continued.

I walked in to find the sitting room dim and he reading the paper beside the fireplace, in dressing gown and nightshirt, hair sleep-tousled as though he'd made up for his long night with a nap in my absence.

"Evening, Holmes" I announced myself.

He glanced up from his paper with customary Holmsian languor, but seemed to recoil subtly at the sight of me. "Evening," he muttered back, and returned to his paper, looking unsettled.

I was still somewhat loath to give into the notion that this was nothing more than an irrational reaction to my now clean-shaven visage, and so gave my friend the wide berth I was accustomed to when he seemed moderately upset by something and did not wish to involve me.

Strangest yet was the fact that on this occasion, said berth did not appear wide enough. I sat down in the chair opposite him silently, unlacing my boots, and kicked them off to stretch my legs gratefully towards the fire. Holmes ignored this at first, but before long any sign of movement from me had him glancing up from his paper suddenly, grey eyes sharp and mistrustful, as though he suspected I might leap from my chair and attack at any moment, seeing as I was within striking distance.

This rendered the silence between us somewhat awkward.

"I think I shall retire early," I sighed at length, prompting him to jump. "Will you be staying up again?"

"I think I shall," he replied, seeming falsely casual. "I may be able to make some headway explaining the results of the experiment I began last night."

He might have said "If I sleep at all I think it shall be with my revolver in my hand and my feet against my bedroom door, so I know if you try to come in during the night and murder me, mustache-less-impostor-Watson."

I frowned at him in some concern, but said only "Alright," and rose to take my leave. As I reached the door I heard a strangely remorseful, vaguely confused "Goodnight?" issue from the room behind me.

"Goodnight, Holmes," I returned, much concerned now, indeed.

I rose the next morning to find a sad and despondent Holmes seated at the deal table, dragging a pencil back and forth in melancholy cross-hatches over the page of his notebook with one hand and his chin cupped in the other.

"Good morning, Holmes," I said from across the room, lest I startle him again.

He glanced over his shoulder with a look like some hope of his had been dashed. "Good morning, Watson," he returned, but the 'Watson' was spoken hesitatingly.

Good heavens, I thought as I took a seat at the table and reached for the untouched newspaper, this is becoming absurd. What is the matter with him? Can this really be about my mustache?

I could not convince him to join me for breakfast that morning, however. And when I returned from my medical rounds that evening, I found him reading the Strand.

I had no idea where he had even found a copy, as his distaste for my 'romanticized little fictions' prompted me to keep few of them about. I entered and removed my coat and hat, studying this strange scene a moment before speaking.

"Good evening, Holmes," I greeted at last.

"Evening," he returned grimly.

Disconcerted by this, I did not immediately move towards my armchair beside the fire, but first poured myself a drink from the sideboard. In all this time my friend did not turn a page of the magazine that lay open before him, though I knew him to be a quick reader.

"What are you looking at?" I asked in puzzlement as I crossed to my armchair, stooping over him a bit as I passed to see.

It was an illustration that seemed to have captured his attention. This surprised me as I knew he felt Mr. Paget's treatment of his own appearance to be something more of a comic caricature than a likeness, but it was not what stopped me in my tracks. It was the clumsy bandaging on the hand he held clutched to his breast, and the chemical stains on his shirtsleeve that spoke too clearly of their origin.

"Oh, Holmes," I scolded, dropping to my knees and reaching for the wounded appendage, "you're hurt."

To my greater shock, he jolted back into his armchair, as though startled by my proximity once again.

"Not at all," he insisted. "I am quite alright."

"Those bandages say you're lying," I scoffed. "Now let me see." But, he shrank again from my touch.

"I've seen to it already," he said.

"Holmes," I remonstrated. "Stop being a child."

He glowered at me a moment before, grudgingly, holding out his injured hand for me to examine.

The burns beneath the bandages were indeed of the chemical variety, but were thankfully superficial. Holmes was tense and silent as I cleaned and dressed them, and I barely managed to coax from him an account of the failed corollary to his earlier experiment by which he had incurred them.

I left him to his own devices shortly after, having had a long and tiring day and feeling little desire to remain in the awkward atmosphere of the sitting room, and received the same strange, sad 'goodnight' as the evening before upon retiring.

I went to bed with a mind full of questions.

The episode with the burns was undoubtedly strange. I had always known Holmes to have a skewed sense of self-preservation, and a mistrust of humanity in general which lead him to be more comfortable treating a wound on his own than seeking a physician's help, but not since the earliest days of our acquaintance had he been so reluctant to accept such help from me. I, as his friend, was accustomed to being, if not the only person he trusted, the only physician. And yet he had responded to my attempts to treat his injury as he would have a stranger's.

I thought for the dozenth time that all this simply could not be about my mustache.

Could it really be that without it I appeared so unfamiliar to my friend as to be a stranger? Had my change in appearance struck him so subliminally as to relegate our association to the same terms as its earliest days, before I had gained his trust?

I could scarcely believe that it would be true, and yet there was only one way to find out.

I went down to breakfast the following morning, the stubbly beginnings of a mustache darkening my upper lip.

Holmes seemed relieved.


	23. Confession

There is something in wearing a mask that smacks of safety. But, there are two kinds of masks.

The first is the sort behind which one hides _everything_. The sort of illusion one maintains by arguing to themselves that a lie of omission is not, in fact, a lie. The security of such a facade derives from it's remoteness.

The second kind is that which one wears not to hide things, but to reveal them.

It is anonymity.

One cannot wear both masks at once. Thus, when at last the Milverton case had concluded and I went to Agatha Shipton to tell her the truth, it was to admit that the only false thing I had given her was a name.

She met my gaze with one that spoke simultaneously of venom and gathering tears, voice level and stoic when she spoke. And your promise, she corrected. That was false, too.

I stood stiffly on the dusty floorboards of the single room she shared with an aging mother, out of place in the quality of my own clothes, though I had not dared reappear dressed as Escott.

I am afraid I must retract it, was all I could say.

I left dissatisfied, with a mind full of thoughts and impressions, but no words to put to them.

I had wished, somehow, to explain that I had never meant to do what I had done. That I had not meant to talk with her as I had during those days I'd spent in Milverton's household. That I had not meant to reveal to her pieces of myself I'd never thought to allow anyone to know.

But how could I have made her understand that it had been because I was not Escott?

I had unthinkingly made him my scapegoat. I had published my own deepest sentiments and emotions under a pseudonym, confident in the knowledge that they would be credited to a man who did not exist. I had exhibited my own heart under glass.

Had I actually given it to her?

No, I thought. Not as such.

But it seemed to be enough that she had seen it.


	24. Evidence

_A/N: In memory of a certain chocolate bar of MrsPencil's. It has been floating around my PM folder for a while, but, without giving away the punch line, I hope, a recently published fic of Pompey's reminded me of it :)_

* * *

"Holmes."

"Hm?" replied the detective, stretching out on the sofa with a chemical journal in one hand and munching on the chocolate bar in the other.

"Aren't you eating evidence?"

"Mm, not any more," he said around a mouthful. "The case is solved."

"It's only that," I insisted, continuing to watch him with some trepidation, "One might consider it unwise to eat evidence in a poisoning case when he has just arrested a chocolatier and said evidence is a chocolate bar."

Holmes flipped through the journal idly. "First," he rejoined, "This is not evidence, as we've discussed. Second - the poisoned bars contained almonds."

"I suppose you mean me to infer that the one you're eating is of some other variety, then," I said.

Holmes nodded. "Hate almonds."

"Lestrade hates it when you take things from his case files," I pointed out.

"All the important items remain intact."

"I still don't think he'd be happy to hear that you had eaten one of them."

"Lestrade was going to eat one of the chocolate bars himself," Holmes argued. "I left him his choice between the other two."

"One of which was almond flavored and assuredly poisoned!" I protested.

"And another which was harmless."

I crossed my arms and fixed my companion with a knowing look. "And what flavor was that one?"

Holmes grinned. "Marmite."


	25. Lapsus Linguae

I found him perched on the edge of his bed, clad in a nightshirt, knees drawn up and limbs wrapped around himself as though holding him together. There was a peculiar tension in his frame, a rigid, frozen sort of stillness, marred only by the slight tremor I could see in his shoulders. I recognized this as his peculiar manner of crying, and when he looked up as I entered, his grey eyes were indeed red-rimmed, his face tear stained.

"Good heavens," I said quietly, voice taut with concern, "Holmes, whatever is the matter?"

He shook his head, jaw clenching and lips pressing into a thin line in what may have been frustration. "I...I don't know," he replied helplessly, voice hoarse with tears. "I woke, and this started...and I couldn't stop." He looked away, scrubbing furiously at his eyes with his sleeve.

I left my bag in the doorway and crossed the room to sit beside him on his bed. It was easy enough to assume, I thought, that he was simply exhausted and overwrought following the case he had just concluded, but some instinct in me insisted that there was something more. Something which Holmes was unwilling, apparently, to admit to himself as well as to me. I had watched it eating away at him as he had worked, these past weeks.

"Do not ask me to explain, Watson," he whispered, chin resting on his knees as he stared fixedly at the flicker of the sole lamp lighting the room, as though he had anticipated my thoughts.

I shook my head. "No, dear fellow. There is no call to."

I did, however, reach out to pull him into my arms.

He flinched at first, eyes flying to meet mine with an almost panicked, feral look, but I had my arms around him before he could protest as he usually would have.

"You're alright, Holmes," I murmured to him as I pulled him towards me. "Easy, now."

He settled against my chest, but his eyes were wide, glassy with tears, and his already heightened breath quickened until his chin began to tremble once again. I felt a twinge of fear and regret as I wondered if I had not made a very grave misstep, but at last he sucked in a shuddering gasp and said:

"Watson..."

I shushed him and held him tighter. He turned to press his head against my shirtfront, clamping down on a sob between his teeth. "I can't get it out of my head," he quavered, shutting his eyes tightly as fresh tears rolled down his cheeks.

"What?" I asked.

"Her. How we found her. I remember everything. The bruises from the ropes on her wrists – it was wound around her right four times and her left seven. Bloody hell...why can't I stop seeing it?" He shook harder, choking back further sobs. "Why this one...now? I don't understand."

I had been wondering the same thing myself. He had seen more violent murders. "It might help if you were to tell me about it," I suggested gently.

"Why? You saw everything that I did."

"Just to get it out. Off your chest."

He said nothing more for what seemed like a long time, clinging to me desperately, until at last he appeared to some degree to compose himself. I had almost given up my suggestion as yet another completley passed over by him, but to my surprise he suddenly began to describe the scene which the memory of had so tormented him.

The detail he recalled was extraordinary. The number and location of marks on the victim's throat, the arrangement of her things scattered about the room, the footprints and signs in the carpet, even details about the weather on the day her body was discovered – all had been meticulously and mercilessly catalogued in his mind.

In one point, however, he erred.

He had begun relating the above to me calmly enough, but had gradually grown more agitated as he spoke, crying harder until he could barely utter a word through his tears.

"...And her ring," he stammered desperately at last. I had been stroking his hair, trying to calm him as he spoke, but froze here as his narrative suddenly seemed to depart from the facts of the crime we had investigated. "He'd removed the ring -" he choked out, and then seemed to loose control completely.

On all the occasions I had seen him shed tears, rare though they had been, I had never before seen him cry so. This, as well as the matter of the ring, I considered at first to indicate as clearly as an outright confession that it was not the victim concerned in his last case that he was grieving. That young woman had been unmarried, and murdered by her sister. His talk of a ring and the man who had apparently removed it would have been nonsensical in relation to the case.

I could do little more than hold him as he wept, murmuring platitudes to him and feeling generally useless. I could not say whether my efforts soothed him at all, but it was a mercy, at least, that the gruelling pace at which he had attacked the investigation had left him exhausted. Before long the sudden torrent of sobs had quieted to whimpers, and he slumped limp and unanimated as the dead in my grasp, utterly spent. I continued to hold him until his eyelids fluttered closed and his form grew heavy against mine with sleep.

There was little enough of that for me, that night. Holmes' own question had become stuck in my mind like a splinter, and I could not cease worrying at it.

Why this case, and why now? What facet of it had differentiated it from all the others, rendering it so grievous to him as to inspire this reaction? And, as the night wore on, I began to doubt if whatever in his own psyche had precipitated it was really as transparent as I had thought.

I had the apparent non-sequitur of the ring to go on, and nothing more. What was there to say, really, that this had constituted some sort of freudian slip, that it related to an incident which had somehow been both personal and terrible for him?

He was, I considered as I looked down at his grief-tattered, unconscious figure, after all a young man who had seen much violence and death in the course of his profession – as I had. Had I not also grieved, in a similar manner, for soldiers I had seen cut down on the battle field, and yet had never known? If ever I had doubted Holmes' humanity, I had little enough reason to do so now. It was possible that the burden of the sympathetic response all human beings experience at the death of another, and Holmes had a tendency to bottle up rather than acknowledge, had simply become too much. Perhaps this outburst had been precipitated by nothing other than time. It was also quite possible that the mistake concerning the ring had been only that – a mistake, a detail recalled from some other investigation allowed to slip into his narrative owing to the troubled and disordered state of his mind, and nothing more.

But if not...

What could the murder of a woman, and the loss of her ring, have meant to him? From what chapter of his past would such a memory derive? How could it be so terrible to him that even he could only look on it obliquely?

At last, with the watery grey light of dawn slipping in past the curtains, I was forced to admit that I had made no progress, and consign such questions to mystery.

I looked down at Holmes, wondering if it would be better to stay with him or retire to my own bed. He appeared quite unconscious, sleeping the sleep of the truly exhausted, dead to the world. At last I slipped out of the embrace we'd reclined in gingerly, settling his head carefully on his pillow. He did not stir.

When I finally woke later that day and joined him in the sitting room, I almost could have believed that none of the previous night's events had occurred – so much did he seem his usual, aloof self once again. In any event, we did not speak of it. He has made no similar mention of a murdered woman or her ring, since – and I have not asked him.

_A/N: I wasn't quite sure what to do with this...it does not feel in character to me, but I could sort of see it happening, in some version of the universe... anyways, wasn't sure whether to consign this piece to the bottom of my documents folder forever or not, so I thought, what the hey, I'll put it on the internet. It was inspired by a phrase which I read in another fic and was intrigued by - a slight variation of which did manage to __Oscar-Wilde its way into the second paragraph above, apologies, it seemed to fit. Unfortunately I recall neither the name of the fic nor the author – it was on lj?_


	26. Sherlock

_A/N: Well – it does sound a bit like it could be a unisex name...Additionally, the canon timeline the following implies may conflict with the history of classical music, which the author does not care about._

Mahler's debut symphony had so far failed to impress me, though it seemed very much to have entertained Holmes ("He writes music however he likes, Watson," had been the verdict, "So do Debussy, Ravel, and every other composer of this modern school," I'd argued. "Yes, Watson – but, unlike the impressionists, Mahler does not even try. Surely you noticed that the third movement was only _Frere Jacques_ in a minor key?"). While such musical delinquency appealed to my friend, I was glad when the intermission finally arrived – and must have shown it, for I managed, as was a rare occasion, to convince him to step out to the lobby for a glass of champagne with me.

Of course, I soon lost him in the crowd of similarly-minded patrons. Holmes was forever wandering off when he felt his presence was not required, or it did not interest him to stay. To date I had lost him in the British Museum, several train stations, on one disastrous occasion a department store, and knew better than to expect to find him by my side in the strand if I felt his hand slip free of my elbow. Therefore, it surprised me not at all to glance up as I took my place in the queue for refreshments and see that he had gone.

What _did_ surprise me was to scan the crowded lobby and spot him in a far corner, talking with a woman.

No, not talking – _chatting._

I blinked, somewhat taken aback. He was smiling at something she had said, which wouldn't have been entirely out of the ordinary – except that I recognized this expression as the one I had categorized as his 'genuine smile,' that quick flash of teeth which he almost had to be surprised into showing. He had another which he wore when he was being purposefully charming, and this was nowhere to be found on his features.

I experienced the fleeting urge to approach the lady and congratulate her on the feat she had accomplished by inspiring such a reaction in him, but was startled out of the impulse when the couple behind me nearly trod on me as the queue advanced and I, my attention on the strange tableau unfolding in the corner, was too distracted to notice.

Moments later, my dignity recovered and a drink somewhat closer within reach, I resumed spying on the new acquaintances and could not help grinning to myself. Sherlock Holmes was conducting a conversation with a _woman_. A conversation which he was apparently enjoying. A conversation with a woman who, I deduced from her own carefree manner, had probably not brought him some sordid tale of woe to be unravelled. Nor, it could be seen from his reaction, did he suspect her of committing some crime herself.

Could it be?

Could it really be true that nothing but normal, pedestrian interest in another human being, as a person and not a variable in an equation, could have drawn him into conversation with this lady?

She was, I appraised, rather lovely – delicate and artistic as a cameo portrait in profile, shining dark amber tresses coiled elegantly at the back of her head to expose the swan-like curve of her throat, a green silk gown that would otherwise have been demure for its lack of adornments tailored perfectly to compliment the graceful, statuesque lines of her form. True, her subtle dress and modest figure rendered her no paragon of what was considered fashionably pretty, but nonetheless, it could hardly be denied that her attributes spoke plainly for themselves. She was no Aphrodite, but a Diana.

Was it possible, I wondered, tapping my chin with a forefinger thoughtfully, that all this had not been lost on my cold and unemotional friend?

Perhaps, I considered further, something like hope beginning to grow in the back of my mind, the lady was not only beautiful, but intelligent. Perhaps she was a charming and witty conversationalist, quick enough to keep pace with my friend and, if his sudden genuine-smile was any indicator, at times surprise him. Perhaps she was well-travelled, well-read, or well-educated. Perhaps she was all three. Perhaps she took a particular interest in the natural sciences, or enlightenment philosophy, or impressionist music. Perhaps she was a musician herself, and she and Holmes were currently entangled in a friendly debate over the finer points of Mahler. It was possible.

Perhaps, I crowed internally, she was an avid student of criminology!

This, however, brought the train of thought I'd been following to a sudden halt, as the somewhat disturbing image of this unique beauty and my unusual friend enthusiastically discussing the recent Whitechapel murders, or some other grisly atrocity, dawned on my mind.

In any event, as I had been thinking on all this the queue had advanced several times more, and I shortly found myself in possession of three glasses of champagne. There was only one thing to do then, I determined, and set off for the corner of the room where the conversation I'd been observing was taking place. Admittedly I had insofar been theorizing on relatively little data. I intended now to make use of the opportunity to gather some.

"...Which amounts to nothing but the plainest of tautologies, after all," Holmes was lecturing as I approached. Miraculously, his pedantry somehow amused the lady rather than putting her off, and she gave an incredulous little chirp of laughter as though in ridicule of the apparently inadequate philosophy upon which he'd been expounding.

"So this is where you disappeared to," I scolded Holmes, taking the opportunity to interject and offer him one of the glasses I held. "Here you are, old boy. And," I continued, turning towards the lady and offering her the third glass, "If I may be excused for taking the liberty, miss...?"

She smiled charmingly, and reached out to accept, saying "Of course, thank you. My name is Broadhusrt – Sherlock Broadhurst."

I am afraid I dropped the glass.

Holmes choked on his own champagne, then proceeded to stare in shock and affront.

The lady, needless to say, responded by looking somewhat taken aback herself. "I beg your pardon," she attempted to recover after a moment, favoring us with another smile. Indeed, through her good graces, our burgeoning acquaintance may even have been repaired, had Holmes not suddenly found his tongue and blurted:

"It is most certainly _not_."

The smile melted. She blinked. "_What _is not?"

"Your name, miss," said Holmes coldly. "Sherlock is a man's name."

"Why - of course it isn't!" she scoffed. "It is _my_ name."

At this juncture, the sounds of tuning emanating from the concert hall signaled that the intermission had ended, and I was quick to seize Holmes by the arm and drag him back to our seats before things could go any more wrong.

He sulked for the entire remainder of the evening.

"You know," I tried at last, unable to endure the tense silence any longer as we rattled home along the dark, rain-damp streets in a cab, "I'm sure it isn't really a woman's name."

Holmes, who had until now been sitting with his head sunk upon his breast, deep in thought, straightened up and barked angrily: "Of course it isn't!"

His next action was to sink wordlessly back down as he had been, and resume sulking.

Another long silence stretched between us, I scrutinizing him from the corner of my eye and trying to imagine some other way to lighten the mood. "You know," I attempted eventually, chuckling, "had you wed, you both would have been named -"

The look he turned upon me for this may very well, had my health been in any weaker state, have killed me on the spot, and was no doubt intended to do so.

I scowled at him as he slouched into his seat once more, crossing his arms, every inch of him radiating sheer pique.

"We're never going to marry you off, Holmes," I complained.

His reply to this, I am afraid, was not fit to record in print.


	27. Vices

Self destruction occurs when frustration simmers too long without an outlet. Finding no application elsewhere, all that dark energy is focused inwards. Before long one finds they want to swing with their eyes shut, for no other reason than to see what they hit. To reach into the darkness and see what reaches back. Recklessness becomes the price of relief.

Relief is only wearing oneself out, in the end.

Whatever one does amounts to draining a capacitor connected in series with a battery. The tension of billions of charges wanting to fly apart bleeds off, only to resume building. The worst part is not knowing that what you're doing amounts to self destruction, but knowing that the behavior is cyclic.

In this sense, boxing is probably least amongst my vices.

The point is _not_ to be struck, for one, although on balance the inevitability of the event almost renders that argument moot. Nonetheless, the fact that the point is to strike the other man seems, somehow, to even things out. Both – striking and being struck - help.

I began fighting in the matches at Jimmy Shaw's pub for the chance to earn an extra ten quid, but after the first time, it was never the reason I returned.

Walking out with a clear head was worth the black eye that often accompanied it, and worlds more.

_A/N: For anyone pondering the historicity of this one - Jimmy Shaw owned a real public house off the Haymarket in London during the victorian era – though the only sporting events the author is aware of taking place there are, admittedly, ratting and dog fighting._


	28. Lieder Ohne Worte

This is not the first attempt I have made at setting some description of my friend's violin playing down on paper. As I know that much of the music he produces will never be recorded by his own pen, the notes of many of his compositions fated to linger no longer than the instant they are played, I feel that the best I can do by them, lacking sufficient knowledge of music theory myself, is to afford them the kind of description which an author can. I have long harbored suspicions that such a description might allow an unparallelled glimpse into his mind – and, perhaps, his heart.

If he has none than I cannot explain where his music might come from. When he knows he has an audience he is skilled enough, but when he plays only for himself I find myself held rapt by what I hear, drifting up through the floorboards like a message in a bottle not meant for me but nonetheless carried inextricably by lapping waves in to shore. Rarely have I been so moved by the playing of even the most lauded of concert violinists, and I cannot imagine my companion producing such melodies without equal feeling.

Tonight what I hear is many layered and intricate. I can imagine long, swift fingers dancing nimbly over strings in a pattern only my friend understands, finding their way as though by some remarkable instinct, producing a sound as though not one but two instruments play in harmony. The low notes drone and the high notes ripple and bob as though the surface of a deep lake had been disturbed, and then the low notes swell and rise, seamlessly taking over. Here and there his bow strikes double stops, swoops over triple stops, the tempo and volume increasing with feeling until clear, piercing notes are played on one string alone, a solo by one of the two phantom instruments he has evoked.

It is not a happy piece. It dips into a theme which is repeated again and again in a steady crescendo until the strings are shouting an accusation. There is something haunting and transient in it, something which puts one in mind of a lonely, clandestine flight – though from what I cannot say. Each phrase seems to end not on a final note, but with a question, strangely incomplete, as if the player were at a loss for what to do. In my mind I see again the flashes of moonlight glancing through the trees that had flown across the floor of our compartment as our train steamed through a wood, the last train we had been able to catch back to London, following a particularly grim case which we were forced to leave unsolved.

The music grows dogged. It is quiet and low, now, the violin growling. The bow saws at the strings. The notes climb and then triple stops come again, played almost as grace notes, the bow no longer swooping over the strings but slashing like a saber. The melody dances in a series of thrusts and parries, dueling with an unseen opponent. I have never seen the player fence, but I imagine him so engaged now – long limbs graceful and desperate, movements quick and balanced, aggression tempered into something beautiful, violence elevated to art form. The violin seems to walk a razor's edge between brutality and civility before fatigue slips into the music. The tempo slows gradually, as though dragged down by a weight. I recall long marches through afghan desserts. The music becomes steadily more simple, the complexity of it unravelling thread by thread, until it sounds as if it can do no more than put one foot in front of the other. There is one last low, drawn out growl, half threat and half surrender. Then silence.

All is completely still for a moment. Then, in the sitting room below, I hear the dull, truncated hum of unintentionally struck strings as the violin is placed in its case, and the muffled click of latches. Footsteps cross the hearthrug, and then fall silent. I do not hear Holmes retire.

I myself will undoubtedly sit up late, watching the lamp gutter, long after I have laid my pen down. I will think of my friend sitting alone before the hearth in the room below mine, perhaps smoking a contemplative cigarette. I will remember the look of haunted, fire-lit grey eyes, made to appear the brighter by dark circles beneath, and begin to fear hearing the sound of a desk drawer being unlocked and opened, and the activity that must undoubtedly follow. I will wonder, for the nth time, what deeper secrets he may keep locked away, and worry over his self-imposed remoteness. Inevitably, I will ask myself what good I am doing him, then, by remaining alone in my room myself.

But, I will not go down. A nature such as Holmes' would brook no intrusion, and I understand that this is neither the time nor place to try his boundaries. It is, as it always is, consolation enough to imagine the way things would be were I not here, a flight of stairs above him. He would still be the sole occupant of a quiet sitting room, but no one would have heard the music that had filled it moments before. No one would have preserved what they could of his playing in prose, or been moved by the piece, or tried to understand it. He would be sitting up alone, and no one would know. Who could say if anyone would be thinking of him? Because I am here, he has this much, at least.

And, in the morning when we both come to breakfast with tired, sleepless eyes, he will know.


	29. The End of the World

Those three years were a singularity. In part, because Holmes had not been the only one to disappear. I feel now, looking back, that I had managed in some sense to vanish, myself. Summarily, I was not myself. Not for three years.

I don't think, after my wife's passing especially, that I had really been living. I was not aware of it then, but I moved through the days in a sort of half-consciousness, as though nothing around me could warrant my attention. Something in the interior of my mind might, I suppose, have held it – but this was not truthfully the case. I think that my state for a while held more in common with sleeping on my feet than with preoccupation.

My memories from that period – few of them though I seemed to collect – are difficult to distinguish from the snatches of a discomfiting dream one might chance to recall upon waking. They are flat and dull, featureless. Three years of my life represent a famine of detail. Something about those scant, vague memories rings false, as though rather than having experienced them I participated in a badly staged charade, or simply imagined them. It had been as though the part of me that had once known how to live lay at the bottom of a deep well, water-logged and torpid, and nothing around me was sufficient to pull it back up to the surface again.

Then Holmes returned - drawn, gaunt, and careworn, trailing a new chapter of his past to which no one was permitted access. It was as though someone had snapped their fingers in front of my face.

I was awake, and aware, and I knew that those three years had been nothing for him like they had for me. I knew that he dreamed of them. I knew it when something would remind him of them by the way he would grow alert, yet distant, his eyes darting furtively back over his shoulder against the pursuit of something he did not expect to see, but couldn't shake. These memories of his, unlike those of the time before I knew him, did not seem to be a void which I could not penetrate, but an isolated box which I could not open. And yet, I was desperate to know them. One of us had been living for three years, though it was him the world had believed dead. I felt that I could have found in his recollections some solace for the time I had lost, if only he would have shared them.

I ventured to ask him, once.

Tell me about Tibet, I said.

When he asked, What? I prevaricated, and replied, just the terrain. The land. Tell me what it looks like.

"Like the end of the world," he'd said dispassionately.

Then he filled his mouth with his pipe stem, and was silent.


	30. Nightmare

The roar of the falls wakes him. The sound is familiar. Disoriented as he is, it still means danger to him, so the question of how he came to be deeply unconscious in its vicinity bewilders him further. He can feel the spray on his face as he opens his eyes. The sky above him is a hard, bright gray, and the black granite cliffs ringed around it make it seem very far off. He's lying on rocks, rounded and smoothed by eons of water flow, but bruising nonetheless. He gets to his feet.

Something in his surroundings, he feels, is wrong – but he isn't sure of what. An uneasiness gnaws at him, as though he has returned to a place he ought to know, and yet found everything subtly changed. He knows these falls, and knows the weeping black granite and the cold mist of spray in the air, but doesn't know the rocky shore far below the cliffs on which he is standing now. It's as though he is viewing everything from the wrong angle. He turns around to look up at the waterfall itself, to see if he can remember. But, he is stopped in his tracks by what he finds laid out at his feet, instead.

It's himself. Or, his body. Stretching away from him on the rocks like his shadow.

He thinks that his heart stops. He can't move for a moment. The body – his body – is all wrong, broken and twisted, limbs jutting out at impossible angles, nightmarish. The eyes are glazed and fixed, staring blindly. The mouth gapes as though frozen in a scream. Blood rouges the lips, trailing in a thin stream over the chalky skin to join the dark stain that is spreading between the rocks beneath the head.

Part of his mind takes in this tableau, noting that the collar his body wears is torn and there are defensive wounds on the hands, as though he has struggled with someone, and understands that he has fallen or been thrown from the cliffs above to his death. Another part of him is incapable of accepting this.

It is absurd that he is here, standing over his own ruined body. It is impossible.

Then in an instant a new sound has mingled with the roar of the falls, and the focus of his astonishment shifts. It's his name. A voice, from very far away, is shouting it. The hair on the back of his neck stands on end.

The distance and the noise of the falls have distorted the voice, to a nearly inhuman buzz of sound at times, but he knows to whom it belongs. It's his friend, looking for him. But, he can't answer - he has no body anymore, no mouth with which to speak.

The voice crying from the cliffs above grows more desperate. For a moment his horror of the twisted parody of himself lying on the rocks is overcome, and he falls on it, shaking the shoulders and beating on the chest, pleading in his mind: _Wake up! Wake up! Please – wake up. _If he can come to life, for even a moment, he'll be able to call out in return.

When his eyes fly open, he thinks at first that this is what has happened.

The sight that greets him, however, is not of Reichenbach, but a darkened room. There is no roar of falling water, no voice calling for him - only his own heightened breathing. For a moment, lying in the dark and stillness, he is relieved. Then his mind drifts back to his nightmare. He remembers the feeling of being searched for.

Suddenly, it is worse to be alone.


	31. Fixed Point

Holmes woke, that first morning in Baker Street, feeling...fused. He had worn himself out. The gears in his mind turned slowly and only with great resistance. His body felt heavy and inert, difficult to coax into motion. It was as though, after years of keeping on the move, he'd lain down at last - and rusted over night.

That he found Watson waiting for him at the breakfast table was a small mercy. What he would have done, had he woken in his old rooms alone, was difficult to say. He had never been able to fill up the space on his own at the best of times, and now he felt like a ghost in them. It would have been immensely more difficult, he felt, to drag himself out of the stupor rest had brought on without a companion. Watson, smiling at him over a cup of coffee, looked like light at the end of a tunnel.

He attempted a smile in return, but managed a mere twitch of the lips. That wasn't right. He'd once come to realize that he had a smile reserved for Watson, an expression which only his friend seemed able to inspire. What had happened to that? Had he forgotten how to do it? Forcing it would not have been right, either. After an instant's vacillation, he simply shuffled over to the table, and sat.

Watson, having always possessed a rare gift for silences, had apparently lost none of his skill for want of practice and poured a second cup of coffee without comment, request for explanation, or intruding chatter. That was as usual. That was as it should be. With a swell of gratitude exaggerated by long years spent away, Holmes stirred his recalcitrant limbs to reach out and accept the cup. But - this was not quite right, either. Years of tea and coffee cups alike, passed back and forth over hearthrug and table, had taught Watson his preferences as surely as he'd learned Watson's. So, why...?

No, no, he realized with a pang - this was how he _had_ taken his coffee. He'd never taken it black, before travel and economy had placed milk and sugar, more often than not, out of reach. Watson had remembered perfectly. He was the one who had forgotten.

He forced himself to down a few swallows of the too sweet, too thick liquid, before giving up and pushing it aside.

Watson had, in the ensuing interval, interested himself in the newspaper. It was some comfort, at least, to realize that he had not lost touch with his old life sufficient to render his friend unreadable to him. Where others might have read indifference in the gesture, he could see it for what it was -_ you need do nothing for my benefit._

Holmes heaved a sigh, leaning back in his chair and turning to glance out the window at the well-known and yet utterly changed street. The empty windows of camden house stared back at him blankly.

_Time_, he thought. _It will only take time_.

He would learn to navigate London and his old life once again.

He had, he reflected, his gaze drifting back across the table to his friend, a fixed point to branch out from.


	32. Corset

It was not as though I was unaware of the lengths to which Sherlock Holmes would go to solve a case.

But, I would never grow used to finding him hopping about the sitting room, struggling to divest himself of petticoats and stockings.

He scowled at me, kohl-lined eyes making the expression appear all the more intense, lightly rouged lips snarling.

"I know," he snapped. "Don't say anything."

I found I didn't need to, and could cast all the aspersions I wished on him with a glance. He ignored my overt disapproval and continued to struggle, cursing, until at last he had untangled one layer of tulle from about his person and could set to work on the next.

"It must have been a magnificent gown," I remarked dourly.

He ignored this as well, and bent to tug at the toe of a stocking, only to straighten up with a gasp and a curse, pressing a hand to his side. "Damn this corset...bloody hell..."

He sank into a chair beside the dining table, posture unnaturally rigid, and abandoned the stockings in favor of resuming the battle with the laces at his waist.

"I don't care what anyone says," he gasped out, breathing constrained to shallow puffs by the boning of the corset, "it takes decidedly masculine resolve and stoicism to dress in ladies' fashion..._blast_ and damn it -"

"Do you want me to help?" I was bound to ask after a moment, my sympathy for his plight eventually outweighing the awkwardness I felt such a proposal might engender.

The balances clearly had not tipped in that direction for Holmes. "Do I want you to help me out of a set of ladies underthings?" he wondered. "No, Watson, I would prefer you didn't." This however, was punctuated with a final string of curses, which culminated with him slumping as far as the corset made possible in the chair, arms dangling at his sides, apparently defeated.

I stared at him with some concern, while he glowered darkly at the ceiling, panting thinly.

"A woman in your position would have a maid to assist her, is all I wish to point out," I shrugged after a moment.

Holmes gathered his breath to retort. No sooner had he opened his mouth, however, than something occurred which altered the parameters of our situation entirely.

There were footsteps on the stairs.

Holmes' posture snapped rigid again, his kohl-lined eyes wide. "I thought Mrs. Hudson was busy with the baking," he said grimly.

"I asked for tea!" I recalled with horror.

Instantly he was on his feet again, hopping and struggling with a stocking, crying: "_P'tain mais quoi –_ Watson, the laces – get the laces!"

I leapt to his aid, equally disturbed by the thought that Mrs. Hudson should find things as they were. "Breathe out!" I ordered, struggling to get enough slack to undo the knots, "How the devil did you tie these? Keep still!"

Holmes gasped like a trod-upon bellowes as I gave the strings a mighty yank, all to no avail.

"Jack knife," he croaked.

"What?"

He twisted about slightly to strike me in the arm with needless force. "Jack knife!" With a curse of my own, I relinquished the laces, and, nursing a bruised and slightly benumbed left arm, darted to the mantel for the knife. Our correspondence fluttered everywhere as I pulled it free and made haste to cut the strings of the corset Holmes wore in one clean slice.

He sucked in an enormous, grateful breath, as the garment fell open, pinning it to his chest with a palm before it could slip to the floor. I wondered that he had ever managed to lace it tightly enough to create the illusion of a feminine waist, however slight, given that the distinctly male figure beneath might have been said to have its dimensions in common with a lamp post. Such a practice, I reflected, could not be healthy.

He said nothing further, but cast a quick, furtive glance at the sitting room door, before dashing for his room, corset held fast with one hand, and petticoat gathered up in the other.

No sooner had he disappeared behind his own door than that of the sitting room opened, revealing our landlady, blissfully ignorant of the struggle that had taken place in the room moments before, bearing an entirely conventional tea tray.

I, of course, was then obliged to affect an appearance of normal behavior myself.

I smiled at her. Probably with undue enthusiasm. "Thank you, Mrs. Hudson!" I announced.

She looked at me askance as she placed the tray on the table beside my arm chair. "You're welcome doctor."

Fortunately, I was saved from the necessity of any further attempts to dissemble by the appearance of Holmes. In what I felt might qualify as a small miracle, he entered the sitting room in shirtsleeves and dressing gown, the quantity of brilliantine with which he had trapped his hair under a wig washed out and the makeup removed from his face. He looked as though, rather than fighting his way free of a gown mere instants earlier, he had only just risen and washed, hair towel damp and complexion dewy. The illusion was almost without fault.

Almost.

I noted, as he sank into his own armchair and made a long arm for the paper with an otherwise convincing yawn, that his eyes still appeared unusually emphatic.

The kohl, I thought, with a sinking heart. In his haste, he had failed to completely remove it – and was now totally unaware of the fact.

I hoped for a moment that this detail might be lost on Mrs. Hudson, but such was not to be. She tutted once at the correspondence scattered across the hearthrug, turned to go – and paused. She peered at Holmes for a moment while he obliviously leafed through the paper, before a knowing smirk spread over her features. She tittered a short laugh.

"The kohl is a lovely touch, Mr. Holmes," she remarked, smiling as she strolled towards the door. "It makes your eyes ever so bright."

Holmes glanced up from his paper, expression falling. "Thank you, Mrs. Hudson," he returned flatly. What else could he have said?

Still chortling, she swept from the room.

Holmes and I regarded one another guiltily for a moment after she'd gone. Of what we were so chagrined, I am not precisely sure. Perhaps it was only that we had been unable to keep anything a secret from her, after all.

"It's a good job she's not a detective," I blurted finally.

Holmes frowned deeply. "Quite."


End file.
